


Patron Saint of Gangland Murders

by knyf



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dirty Talk, F/M, First Time, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mafia AU, Minor Character Death, Prostitution, Riding, Sexual Assault, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Character, Violence, mob, self hate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-27 12:31:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knyf/pseuds/knyf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank knows that, when it came down to it, he’d die for any one of his boys. It’s just, he didn’t think it would happen so fucking soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time ever posting my writing, after lurking the bandom and writing for six years now. I can't promise it will be worth your time, I can't even promise that I'll finish it, but here's to hoping that it'll be worth something to someone.   
> Thanks for stopping by anyhow. xo.

Frank knows that, when it came down to it, he’d die for any one of his boys. It’s just, he didn’t think it would happen so fucking soon.

They were taking heavy fire, fucking ambushed in a little cobblestone street. Goddamn little fruit vendors lost their charm after you realized they were fucking packing heat. They ducked for cover and whipped out their own pieces, naturally. Because that’s what this was: their fucking nature. Frank was slunk low behind a car, trading fire with the fuckers who burst out of seemingly nowhere, picking off two of his men from the get-go. His blood was roaring in his veins and, as if his was any different from his usual stance, he was shooting to kill, a vague satisfaction registering with every scream-dull thunk combination that meant he'd hit his mark. 

He had taken out maybe four or five guys, out of the oh, twenty or so that surrounded their motley crue of ten… He mind auto corrects this number, ticking off the face of the dead without really registering the overwhelming fucking pain the thought carried behind it. Frank figured they were currently eight against thirteen or so. So, in shit about knee deep considering Frank had some of his most inexperienced with him. Not quite liabilities but most definitely not his top choice of guys to be backing him in this situation. 

He grits his teeth and tries to pick off that fruit vendor, aiming just below the annoying striped hat to the space between his eyes that was begging for lead the moment he gunned down Lorenzo. A vindicating spurt of blood onto the cart of oranges doesn’t quite satiate his burn for redemption, but it’s a start. From the corner of his eye he sees a flurry of movement, and ah, shit. One of his guys, a kid, really, is fucking darting out from his cover. Frank doesn’t know why, what the fuck possessed the kid, Joey, maybe just that almighty pants-pissing fear that Frank got his first time out too. 

There’s a split second in which all Frank can picture is the Joey’s momma, sweet lady who smelled like rose perfume and tomato sauce. He sends out a prayer to his own mom, then to the Holy Mother, and with a sharp breath he runs out after the kid.   
There’s a trail of gunfire on the kid’s tail that Frank swerves around. He slams into the kids hard, grabbing him and using the force to roll them into a nearby alleyway.   
“Shit—fuck --” Frank pants curses, pressed flat against the bricks, hand on Joey’s chest holding him in place. He peeks around the corner, chest loosening just a little to see a man toppling over the ledge of a building, the sick crunching sound proof that his boys are holding their own. 

“Goddamit Joey,” His voice is an exhale, the tail end of panic. “What the fuck were you thinking, ki— Aw, fuck. Fuck fuck shit,” He pulls back his hand to see it’s dripping with blood, the trail of drips on the concrete plotting a course to the three bullet wounds in Joey’s shirt font. 

“Frank, Frank you gotta…You gotta,” Frank’s kneeling in front of Joe now, his jacket pressed into the kid’s chest. “You gotta tell my mom –“Joey’s blood slick fingers are cupped around Frank’s cheek. Frank wraps his hand around Joey’s, holding his suit jacket over the bullet holes for all it was worth. 

“You gotta tell my family… tell my mom that I’m sorry and, and- that I love them…” For a moment Frank considers shushing Joey. Holding onto the fool’s hope that the phrase ‘you can tell them youself’ held in its hollow words. “And –“ He struggles, breath gurgling as blood trickles out of his mouth, mottling his words. “T-Tell my girl th-that—“ The kid’s struggling for breath, fighting to keep his eyes open. “Tell my girl… Tell my girl to name… N-name the kid. After my dad.” There’s a sudden burst of strength in which Joey pulls Frank by the collar, so their foreheads touch. “Promise you’ll take care of em. Promise you’ll make sure my kid knows that his daddy loves him. A- And watch out f-for my girl. P-Please…” His grip on Frank slackens, hand sliding away. “Promise…”

“I promise Joey. I promise,” Frank whispers solemnly, hands gripping Joey’s young --too young-- face.  
Joey nods slow, eyes losing focus. Frank waits, his eyes closed. The gun fire in the back ground fades to a dull nothing. Frank focuses on each of Joey’s breaths, counting them. Making sure someone listens to them. Knows how precious they are. Frank himself doesn’t even breath, doesn’t want to trample over the sad, wet sounds of Joey’s final breaths. As it stops, Frank opens his eyes, forcing himself to look straight into Joey’s face. He leans in, kisses both of Joey’s cheeks and then his forehead. 

“You are absolved,” He whispers, his tattooed fingers slipping the kid’s – the man’s – eyelids closed in a gesture of finality.

He stands, covering Joey with his crimson-soaked jacket, shooting a glance around the corner. At his estimation, there are seven guys left trading fire with his men.   
A final glance at the shape of Joey beneath his suit jacket, and without another word, he kills them all.


	2. Chapter 2

Behind even the most hardened Mafioso is someone’s mother. That’s what it was about, after all. The Familia, some bonded by blood and other by bullets. No respectable Italian boy wanted to let his mama down. But there was business to handle, and in considering their line of work, there were things you just didn’t tell your ma. In Frank’s case, he maybe had more than others not to parade around, and not all of it strictly job related.

_They were gathered in a loose circle, more feet than not kicked up in the picture of arrogance. Frank was watching dust particles swirl in a strip of sunlight that fell on them from a broken window above. His interest on tracking the dust’s progress was, he knew, a product of his anxiety at what was in the middle of their circle; what they were congregated at their hideout (a dilapidated warehouse downtown) for in the first place._

_The magazines, girls posed scantily clad on the cover, eyes half lidded with synthetic lust. Their collection was their pride and joy, built slowly up to what it was today through pilfering from their dad’s collections, swiped from the corner stores they worked at part time. They had their ways._

“ _Ay Frank, you daydreamin or what?”_

_There was the customary sheepishness but mostly they had it down to ritual. There was a small window in the beginning where talking was okay – the breathy laughs of ‘dude, look at that rack’ and ‘what I wouldn’t do to her’ and the like… then they fell to their own matters, each in private reverie. If possible, Frank’s was even more private, because no matter what he tried there was no way to get his dick to respond to the girls in the magazines… or girls. At all._

There’s two people in the coffin. Inside the dark polished cherrywood Joey lays pale and oddly plastic-looking. A morbid kind of action figure being packed away in its box. But he’s not mint condition, the closed second door of the coffin and an imported Italian suit hiding the holes in his chest and stomach. But there’s a second person. And he’s trapped. Frank’s shadowy reflection in the glossy wood unsettles him… He’s sure there’s some deeper philosophical struggle but that’s a thought tugging at him that he doesn’t want to follow. Can’t follow. He’s got an image to uphold and shit, _shit_ he cannot lose it here. Every little sounds echoes as if he’s moving with some great force behind it. Maybe it’s just the heavy emptiness of the church… cavernous ceilings and low candle light.

Every resounding noise rings in his chest like it’s been hollowed out with something dull: scraped out with a child’s plastic pumpkin carver, scooping out his mushy jack-o-lantern insides. This is the third and last of the funerals spawned by that day in the street. He’d like to say that no one is any worse than another – equal evils so to speak. But if he’s being honest this one is different. Maybe it’s Joey’s age, or that Frank was fucking _holding him_ as it happened. But then he hears a noise somehow soft behind him and he turns. Joey’s girl is standing beside the heavy wooden double doors. Frank doesn’t know if she’s coming or going but she’s dressed in the traditional black of mourning and the light of the chapel’s candles glints of the ring on her left hand. It rests on the prominent bump in her floor length dress and the veil on her hat isn’t quite enough to mask the look she gives Frank. Like she’s just…lost. Like she’s somehow wandered into here by mistake and she needs Frank to set her back on her path.

And he can’t.

His eyes drift downward from her gaze, darts between her engagement ring and the fatherless child beneath it. He thinks that this is what sets this one apart, drives that many more knives into his heart.

He also thinks that he needs a drink.  


	3. Chapter 3

The bar he favors is a shitty hole-in-the wall neighborhood joint. One where they know him, can read him by now. They’d comp him if he’d let them. But he likes to do his bit for local business and right now really he needs somewhere that will give him a Plague-sized berth, even if that distance is borne of the fear they have for his last name. He walks in and asks for a whole bottle of single malt, which is handed over with no hesitation even as the bartender’s hands shake, and Frank pays with a hundred dollar bill.

There is a table in a dingy back corner that seems to suit his needs of isolation. Or as close as he could get to it in bar that’s half full at the late hour of two in the afternoon. He’s not sure what he’s thinking, which sums things up nicely. He’s not quite sure he’s thinking at all. He’s leaving himself entirely too vulnerable. Potentially soon to be inebriated and without any of the protection of his men that normally travel like wolves in a pack. The thoughts in his head aren’t quite thoughts, just bits of images he’d rather not revisit – the first curbing he’d witnessed… the first curbing he’d performed. Joey. Lorenzo. Joey. Paul. JoeyJoeyJoey. There’s that leaden anchor that’s dragging his heart down his spine, shattering the vertebrae on the way so that his excruciating pain gives slowly over to into shocked numbness. Joey is different. Was different? His death was. Different. For more reasons than Frank had thus far cared to admit. There are more flashes, unbidden, of Frank and of Joey. Joey young at death was even younger in Frank’s memory. Frank was drunk, he thinks. Was Joey? It’s a fair assumption but not a fact. Frank shouldn't even have been at a party like that, he was too old. But he was talked into it, by a girl he’d been seeing? There was a question mark next to the thought because there were only a few things about that night that he knew as certain. How he got there wasn’t one of them.

Joey’s touch was one. Strong enough to burn through the haze of his drunkenness then, to stand vivid and searing against the backs of his eyelids now. Years later.

Frank was a quiet drunk, had holed himself up in an attic or some such place. The room had a record player in it. He remembers music. Something slow and bluesy like his own intoxicated self. And then Joey was there. Only in retrospect did Frank closely consider that thought. Frank wasn’t one to be found if he had chosen to hid, so it appeared to him that he’d been watched. Followed. Joey said something like: hey. Like: it sure is loud out there. Maybe it was the drunk vision, where things may be closer than they appear, but it seemed like Joey’s words were suddenly a lot closer… And yes, they were because Frank can remember everything about the way the night felt and now he could feel Joey’s words on his lips. Warm and breathy. He doesn’t know if he smelled booze on him. Doesn’t know if he said anything to question Joey’s proximity to his face… What he knew and will always know is that Joey’s was the best kiss he’d had in his life. The sweetest and softest and the only one to have ever sent tendrils of warmth curling down to his toes.

The best kiss of his life is dead.

They never mentioned it after it happened. And now Frank is alone in a bar in the afternoon, wondering if he should have. Knowing that he won’t ever get to. And thinking that now there isn’t a damn thing that he can do about it.

The black and white of the whiskey label mocks the complexity of his life. But then again, is it not so much mockery as the reason people are drawn to alcohol in the first place? The fact that it simplifies things to a duochromatic level. On the surface it does anyway, Frank thinks as he fingers the smooth edge of the label. The label might be simplistic but the content of the bottle is where the complications lie. But mostly he thinks he’s thinking too much. So he pours himself a shot in order to try and solve that problem.

“You always drink alone?” The chair at his solemn island of a table scrapes and Frank looks up. And then down as a man sits at across from him.

“And who are you to be asking?” Seriously. Is the guy new the area? And did he fall on his head on the way in?  
The man smiles, chin resting in his palm. “I’m Gerard. And you?”

Frank straightens in his chair, slightly and slowly. His hand slips beneath his jacket in a movement that he’s practiced enough to be undetectable. His fingers brush the cold metal of his gun and he answers slowly. “Frank. _Iero_.” He draws out the word so all the three syllables are in their own deadly category.

“ _Eye. Ear. Oh.”_ The man, Gerard apparently, runs his pinkie absentmindedly around his pink lips as he pronounces Frank’s name in way that makes and weird tingle run down Frank’s spine. His hand tightens on his gun. “That sounds familiar…” Gerard pauses. “ _Oh._ Iero. Your family’s a big deal around these parts, right?” The way he looks at Frank from beneath his eyelashes is unsettling. Frank’s hand twitches. “You can take put your gun hand down, by the by. I’m not here to whack you, or whatever it is that you people call it. Just here to talk.”

Frank’s hand doesn’t move. He stares Gerard hard in the eye, who holds is jacket open and shakes it to indicate it’s innocence. “My intentions are pure… Or at least not murderous. So there’s no reason for a twitchy trigger finger.”

Frank settles, hand sliding slowly out of his coat, although he’s not sure why. There’s something about the guy. He doesn’t trust the guy, per se, but he doesn’t quite distrust him in the way that he inherently does most people.

“What _do_ you want then?” Frank asks, examining the guy for the first time. It might just be the low, dust-filtered light or the bar but the guy’s skin is death pale. He’s outfitted in nearly all black – black overcoat over tight black vest, the peekaboo of a black silk tie… the only thing not black in his attire in is a thick red scarf, knotted artfully around his delicate neck.  
“Well, a pony for starters, a mansion with a heated pool, snake skin boots and a king-sized bed with Egyptian cotton sheets and a canopy. But I’ll settle for good conversation over mediocre liquor,” He finishes with a flourish of one hand, his other hand settled again beneath his chin.  
Something clicks for Frank then and he thinks he knows what Gerard is about.

“How much?”

Gerard’s face doesn’t give anything away. “Whatever do you mean?”

“How much is this ‘conversation’ going to cost me?” Frank asks. He’s using his best dealing face. Which is really to say, he’s doing his utmost to be cool and removed, as if the outcome could really matter less to him. But there’s a thrill in his stomach claiming otherwise.

Frank’s eyes set on Gerard’s face catch the way he loses some of his flamboyance, settles into something more like Frank’s stance. Business-like.

“Depends on what you want to ‘talk’ about,” Gerard says, eyes glinting. His face is what seduction would look like if it came out of a gun barrel. Dangerous and no-nonsense but potent and flat-out fucking erotic.

Frank licks his lips, meets Gerard’s gaze because that’s what he was taught to do. Always. But he wants time to think and Gerard’s eyes somehow sap him of the ability to do so. He reaches for the whiskey, trying to appear as if he’s doing anything other than backing down. As he pours himself a shot, he tries to refocus (just when did he lose focus in the first place?) on matters of importance. He is Frank Anthony Fucking Iero. And he is not about to pick up a male prostitute, in a bar, mid-afternoon, the day of Joey’s funeral. He has a lot more to lose than just his life and this could very well be his undoing.

Gerard is waiting for Frank’s answer, eyes smoldering, lips curled into a smirk that Frank wants to taste. But he can’t. That’s the reality of who he is. A man with fucking responsibility and priorities and for the love of God, more restraint than this.

“You know, I’m not really in the mood to chat,” Frank says coolly, setting down his glass with a clink and watching as Gerard’s eyebrows raise on his forehead. Perhaps he thought Frank was a done deal.

Gerard takes a moment to consider, Frank supposes. To adjust. Franks could understand why the guy wasn’t used to being rejected. The thought brings with it a heavy dose of shame.

As if he could sense the movement, the threat carried behind it, Gerard throws up one hand in a small concession of defeat. “If you say so,” He adjusts his scarf. “But you seem like a man with a lot to say, if you ask me.” He stands then, pushing in his chair behind him. As a word of parting, he turns as he steps away. “If your mind changes, you come find me, hon.”

Frank sits very still and watches Gerard retreat. As he leaves, Frank has a sensation of his blood rushing back into his limbs – his instincts returning, his mind clicking back on. He replays things in his head and the last word, ‘hon’, rings shrill in his mind. Surreptitiously, he cast a glance around at the other patrons. He feels rattled – paranoid and flustered. He knows he shouldn’t trust himself but it seems to him that everyone knows that an Iero just came dangerously close to picking up a faggot whore. He stands suddenly, stowing the bottle in his coat, leaving the glass be. As he walks out he does his best to turn his eyes cold, turns his face harsh and emanates what he hopes are serious ‘if you know what’s good for you’ vibes. As he makes it out of the bar, the flash of deep red scarf is disappearing around the corner. He speeds his steps without running, and the mindset he’s sinking into sets his body to a different rhythm. He is sleek. Silent. A deadly being deaf to mercy. He catches up to Gerard without being detected, easily snapping out his arm and pulling them into an alcove. He slams the man against the bricks of the wall, and in one swift motion has the barrel of his gun shoved snugly beneath Gerard’s jaw.

“Listen here _faggot_ ,” His voice is a low hiss but the fear in Gerard’s wide and impossibly pretty eyes ensures that Gerard’s catching every word. “I am not like you. You are a disgusting little creature that I wouldn’t let near my cock even if it would fall off otherwise.”  
Frank can feel Gerard shaking through his gun, vibrations of terror coursing down the barrel. He can do this. This is him. The real him. Not the bitch back in the bar who almost let a fucking whore manipulate him.

“You are not going to tell anyone about this, about the little conversation we had. Do you want to know how I know?”  
Gerard hastens to speak, to choke out the words he thinks Frank wants to hear. “I-I won’t, I wouldn’t –“

Frank shushes him, as if it were a child’s incessant babbling and not desperate pleading. “No, I know you won’t tell because I am going to blow your fucking brains out.”  
Gerard whimpers, dropping a little against the walls as his legs numb beneath him. “Fucking cocksucker, you think you can just prance your fairy ass up to an Iero? “ Gerard head shakes a vehement “no.”

“Yeah, we’ll I’m going to correct your fucking mistake for you,” He shoves the gun harder against Gerard’s white skin and leans in, until their faces are touching.

“P-Please. I have a little brother, he- he needs me. I’m all he has. He’s a kid, Frank. He’ll- He’ll die without m-me. His name is Mikey,” Gerard begs quietly and maybe it’s the change in lighting from the bar, or maybe it’s the gun against his head but Gerard looks like a kid himself. Pale and terrified and just so young. Frank flashes to another kid in another alley. To the baby who ‘ll be brought into the world already without a father. But another part of his mind whispers urgently to him that people can’t know. That if people find out that he’s a dirty faggot that he’ll lose everything. Everything.

He firms his resolve, tells himself that this is what has to happen. He says an apology to a kid named Mikey that he doesn’t even know and tells his trigger finger to move.  
  
But it won’t.

And he knows that this isn’t a motive he ever wanted to have for taking someone’s life. His own shame, enacted on someone innocent. His own guilt over what he is manifesting itself in a bullet. But in all of that he knows that he has a secret that needs to be kept. He twists the gun into Gerard’s skin, red indentation marring something too pretty to be flawless.

“If I hear anyone say anything about me after this,” Frank whispers. ”Anything _at all_ , I will find you. And I will find Mikey. And I will kill him in front of you. And then I’ll do you a favor and kill you too. Got it?”

Gerard nods hard and Frank slams him against the wall with one hand , the other hasn’t let go of his gun.

“Do you--“ He throws him against the bricks. “Fucking—“ Throws him again. “UNDERSTAND ME?”

It’s unfair that the tears in Gerard’s eyes make them sparkle even prettier than before. He begs in gasps. “Yes. I- I understand. I won’t tell. Anything. To anyone. I promise.”

Frank doesn’t respond. Just looks long into Gerard’s eyes and then pulls his gun away, letting the shaking man fall. Franks stands there for a moment and looks and Gerard, keeled over on the dirty ground, red scarf pooled around his neck like blood.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last bit that I have pre-written, so if there are parts to follow I'm not sure when they'll be posted on the account of college being a terrible soul-sucking creativity-sapping pit of evil.  
> Thanks for reading, though. Comments are lovely things too, if you're down to hook a sista up. xo.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some backstory for Frank's internalized homophobia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shittily thrown together chapter for your viewing pleasure. Let me know how you feel about it. And I apologize for not having marked triggers before this -- warnings for homophobia, sexual assault, homophobic violence, graphic violence, and death.

Frank didn’t know the guy. But that wasn’t entirely true, he had to admit to himself. He knew of the guy, and if he was being honest with himself it was even more than that. Because as soon as he knew of the guy, of what people said he was, bred in him was a morbid and frankly dangerous habit of somehow being wherever Henry Swanko happened to turn up. Or it might have been a trick of the mind, feeding off Frank’s paranoia that he suddenly seemed to see Henry everywhere, the trick being that he’d always been there before but only now did Frank notice. The bits of rumors were plastered to the inside of his head in the way serial killers amassed newspaper clippings. Frank made this comparison himself and this scared him. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t forget what the hushed whispers said about Swanko. What he did with other boys. Stories of hearsay and back alleys and once, Linda Terrelli swore to Vicky Samson in Frank’s homeroom, she saw Swanko leaving the Blue Flamingo Lounge all hush-hush with his coat collar pulled up around his face.

The thing was -- Swanko seemed normal enough, at least to Frank. Which was cause for even more worry as Frank thought he himself looked pretty normal which meant that he could be carrying the same deadly disease. 

Frank prayed. He was, after all, raised with the fear of God, courtesy of the Catholic Church. His hands clenched nightly in prayer that God would deliver him, allow him to transcend the sins that plagued the backs of his eyelids. That he could abandon the places that his mind so often took him, wandering to dimly lit alleys, where he pictured Swanko with faceless, lusty men. While he lacked context his imagination ran away with details for which he had no knowledge. The low moans, the way Swanko’s head lulled back on his neck, the other boy’s hollowed cheeks and -- 

And Frank knew he desperately needed help. Needed the purity that not even the hottest of showers were affording him. But his faith was failing him. In the darkness of his room, where the quiet of the night made the soft rustle of his sheets sound like Satan’s disciples creeping into his room, guiding his hand beneath the waistband of his pajamas, warping his muted panting into communication with the devil himself.

He remembers that day in a detail that he wish he could run from.   
He wishes Swanko could have ran. He wishes that he could have let him. But he couldn't. Not even if he wasn't the prodigal son of one of the biggest bosses in the state. In came down to something more simplistic than even the bloodline that sealed his fate. It was kill or be killed.   
  
_He was leaving the arcade, pockets emptied of his hard earned quarters. (His father was a a strong believer is knowing the value of a dollar – “You don't build an empire by throwin ya money away on any little thing, Frankie boy,” - one of his bits of wisdom, nestled in beside how to blind a guy)._ __  
  
He was taking a shortcut, head down and eyes open. Ears too, unfortunately, and this is how he hears the muted strains of a scream. Curious fucker, he can't help it, and while he knows that it isn't any of his business, that he should set his shoulders and keep walking... he can't. His instincts work against his teachings, and he trains his ears on the distant sounds of struggle, feet on autopilot. It's half-way down the block, one of the hundreds of shady back-alleys Jersey had to offer. He approached quietly, assessing his surroundings calmly even as his heart pumped a staccato of adrenaline. But no matter how well he knew how to handle himself, his composure was rattled when something grabbed at his ankle from the mouth of the alley. He kicked out, instinctively, vicious and startled, hitting something hard with a viscous snap. It happens lightning-quick, his eyes scanning the scene in quick darts.  


_At his feet is Henry Swanko, blood streaming down his face, coating a ball gag stuffed inbetween lush lips with slick crimson. It clicks with Frank what the snapping sound was – his kick had broken Swanko's nose. But his nose seemed to be the least of his concerns at the moment. His legs stuck out behind him at odd angles, off-white shards of what Frank realizes is bone peeking through tears in tight jeans. Swanko's face is not the intricate and too-pretty canvas Frank hates himself for remembering so well; one of his eyes is swollen shut, bloody gaps stand in place of teeth, marring a once-charming smile. His fingers bend off into unnatural directions and Frank thinks how painful it must have been to wrap those broken twigs of a hand around Frank's ankle. But even being the macabre sight he is, Swanko is far from the only horror occupying the alley. Further down there lay a body that Frank knows without having to be told is already dead. It's the face-down form of a man, face turned away from Frank. The blood pooled around him is tell-tale, matching the stillness of the body. And crowded around the corpse is a group of boys Frank recognizes not only from school, but also from their features – sons of friends of Frank's father. They are very much alive. Violently so, their faces contorted in cruel laughter and hands gripping various makeshift weaponry: crow-bars, baseball bats._

_Frank is stuck. He wants to run now, in the same way his instinct before lead him here, it is now screaming shrill warning sirens in his head._ Go. **Go**. **GO.** _But his feet stick to the pavement, held down by the weight of his father's expectations. Men do not run. And when they do, it's the Iero men who stick around. But even so, he wants nothing more than to turn tail and run until his legs give out beneath him._  
  
“Hey, Iero!” One of the boys calls to him. “Nice job kicking that fairy in his pretty face.” Frank looks to the boy, Chris Rossi, who stands near the front of the loosely formed group. “Now kick him back over here, we was just letting him see how far he could crawl.” 

_Frank looks down at the pile of marred flesh that he had been trying so desperately to ignore, for fear that it would do exactly what it was doing currently – looking up at him, Swanko's one good eye doing the pleading that his gagged mouth couldn't. Frank shifted his eyes away, shame and guilt congealing in his stomach, making him want to puke. He didn't have a choice. He was as trapped as Swanko, and there wasn't anyway out that Frank could see. Not for either of them._

_So he falls into his role as his father's only son and kicks Swanko again, herding him like an animal to the slaughter that awaited him at the alley's end._

Frank hates to think of the rest. Hates himself for never being able to forget it, triggering the memory like tipping over dominos; once he begins the tale, he can't bring himself to stop before it reaches it's conclusion, bright, much-too vivid flashes –

“ _Caught him with his faggot friend over there --” Rossi jerks his head to indicate the body. “Real fucking sick, the two of em. Fucking animals. Aint like we really meant to kill em but hey, he hit his head real hard and God works in mysterious ways.” He looked Frank in the eye, and even if what he said next wasn't an accusation against Frank, it felt enough like one that Frank knew he would do anything Rossi said, anything to prove himself. “And God hates faggots.”_

_Rossi crouched down beside Swanko's whimpering form, speaking in a low tone. “You like cock you little bitch? Bet you fucking love drinking cum you fucking pervert. You make me fucking sick. Well, you want cum so much your gonna fucking get it.” He straightened up, addressing the whole group._

“ _Let's give the little faggot what he wants boys.” His hand reached down to undo his zipper, and Frank's heart sank, if possible, even lower into the acidic pit of his stomach. When the rest of the group followed Rossi's lead, Frank knew he had to follow suit. Hands shaking he undid his pants, pulling out his dick like everyone else. The last thing he thought he'd be able to do right now was get hard. Rossi stooped again, saying to Swanko “You scream and I'll cut your tongue out, got it?” before removing the blood-slick ball gag. “Alright boys. Aim for his face when you shoot your load. Faggot loves the taste, might as well do him a favor before we get rid of him.”_

One of the worst parts, the thought that never fucking failed to churn his stomach, was that to cum on Swanko's ruined face, to even get an erection, he had to picture Swanko in his splendor. Rose-colored lips, thick dark hair, hands that could do anything they pleased to Frank. He didn't mean to, he sure as fuck didn't want to, but it was what he had at hand. He didn't have a choice.

But what was worse. Far worse. Was the way Swanko looked up at Frank at the end, when Frank loomed over him with the crow-bar Rossi pushed into his hands. _Go ahead, Iero. Make your dad proud. Get this filth off the streets.  
_

What was worse was the way Swanko said his name. Broken. Desperate. _Frank. Frank, please. Frankie._ He called him Frankie. Like they were familiar, like they were friends. Frank didn't even know Swanko knew his name. But Frank couldn't let Rossi think they were friends. Couldn't give him an idea that they were anything to each other. They weren't, Frank told himself. They weren't.   
  


_Frankie. Please, for the love of God. Frankie._

And the name was coming out of his mouth again.   
Frank had to shut him up, lest he end up in the same position.   
  


_Fran--_  
  
The name was lost to the swooshing of air the crow-bar made when it arced, coming down hard on Swanko's face. 

And the painful irony was in destroying Swanko, Frank made sure he would never be able to forget him.  


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for sexual assault, alcoholism, violence.   
> I know it's sorta disjointed, for which I apologize. Thanks for reading!

Frank is, certifiably, an idiot. It was a dangerous combination, power and idiocy. Like holding gasoline in one hand, a lit match in the other, and then being told to walk across a tight rope. That's where he was, looking down at the vast expanse of the dingy cityscape below. Or, more accurately, this is how he felt. Like he was traversing a floss-thin line and a misstep would be explosive.

He is distracted. He knows it. Even the steely mask he slips on for interaction within the Family cracks just as soon as he's left alone again. He needs to be present, he needs to be the man to which his father passed the legacy of the Ieros. Not the man whose hands shake, who at night handles himself beneath the sheets, cumming dizzingly hard to visions of dark eyes and red scarves.   
  
He doesn't want to be this person, can't afford to be, proven by the fact that even thinking about it has him absent-minded. The only clarity he seems to have is violence, exchanges of gun fire, the danger inherent in his existence that rears it's bitter head over and over again. The violence was consistently inconsistent, striking oft without notice -but when you spend your life on tenterhooks, you can't quite bring yourself to be surprised. Surprise was a disadvantage, actually, one that Frank didn't often succumb to. Like when he and Louie were walking the rounds, checking in on certain investments so to speak, and they were passing a certain alcove. Frank pushed Louie ahead of him, and Louie went without protest, knowing his place. And sure enough, when a hand snakes out to grab ahold of Louie's elbow, Frank is equally quick in reaching out and snapping the attacker's wrist with a practiced precision. The lurker is a nobody, though Frank remembers makes a vague association between the guy and the Rossi's. The guy's alone, and Frank suspects it's just some lowlife trying to earn pull with one of the Families by bringing in one of the Iero's men, or perhaps Frank himself.   
  
But even in his less-than-pristine mental state, it was going to take more than that to bring him down.   
  
Frank executes him, quiet and with little ceremony, lead forming a third grey eye between the man's existing two. He leaves quickly and without a word, not shaken by the attack as much as bit of folk-lore about the mystical power of the third eye rattling around in his head. Even if the third eye was fabricated by violence, and the other two lightless and dead, Frank had the eerie sense that the guy could see into his dirtied, perverse insides.

On the street once again, Louie caught Frank's eye and nodded. Frank returned the nod, curtly, and in this gesture knew it was understood – it wasn't that Louie was dispensable. It was just that Frank was indispensable, such was the order of things. It didn't get to be any other way, even if Frank can remember shooting marbles and childhood sleepovers with Louie and wishes that it could maybe be otherwise. That Louie, with his smiling lilac-scented wife, and his daughter just learning to walk, deserves respect, deserves _life_ more than Frank and his dirty wandering hands.

***  
  
It wasn't a _problem_ Frank had. Not really. If you asked him, he would opine that it was more of a solution than anything else. The weight of the bottle on the seams in his jacket pocket served as a counter-balance of sorts to the weight of his sin-seeped heart. He needed a kind of baptism, to soak out his impurities. Or at least, if it wasn't a cleansing of the heart, it was a numbing of the mind. Maybe, if he could slow down his thoughts with the potency of single malt, then they wouldn't be so quick to destroy him.

(Thought truth be told, truth be whispered, rather, it likely couldn't be called a “solution” if he need to apply it on a near nightly basis.)

But for now, it was what he had.

***  
  
Frank was raised by his neighborhood; though the claim wasn't unique. It was something sitched into the hearts of any number of the hoodlums Frank spent his formative years ducking in and out of alleys with, sticky hands slipping marbles and candies into their pockets while shop keepers pretended not to notice (as if they could forget who the boys' fathers were).

Frank knows he was a little fuck of a kid, too entitled and reckless. Not moving out of other people's ways but making them move for him, as if he had any power beyond whose blood pulsed in his veins. Now, older if not wiser, Frank understood that he owed this neighborhood. That he was at once the force that endangered them as well as their defense. That said, he didn't exactly have it in him to ignore potentially fuckery occurring under his nose. Even in his desire to do nothing more than search the bottom of every nearby bottle for the answer to his perversions, he refused to ignore his instinct to protect these people. Like his instincts currently, the ones that told him something was amiss about the noises he was hearing over the clinking of the bottle in his pocket against the butt of his gun in his holster.   
  


Like a whimpering. Sounds made against ones will, as if they've been told to be silent but can't. It was something Frank understood intimately because of his line of work; he knew the sounds coaxed out of someone when they next seconds of their life held the threat of death.

He was not ignoring this.

His ears lead him to a backalley, dirty brick walls of failed businesses running parallel to a rusted chainlink fence. Everything about it checks off boxes on a list in Frank's head, requirements of seclusion for far from pure intentions. And sure enough.   
Sure enough.   
  
Some yards away, there's a child pressed against the chain links, huddled in on himself nearly, metal digging into him in ways that must be uncomfortable. But he's caught between two metals, as far as Frank can see, the glint of a knife against the boy's throat, trapped in by the comparatively hulking figure pressed close to the boy in a way that makes Frank's stomach churn.

Frank's brain clicks into action, and he turns quietly to leave. With a threat to the child as imminent as that knife is to his pulse, it's not safe to approach...   
… From the side, anyway.

Frank backtracks to the main street, steps brisk and mind focused. He traces back to a block before, by his estimation the path that will lead to near directly behind the back of the attacker. Skirting around broken bottles and ominously-colored puddles, Frank presses himself against the wall at the mouth of the sidestreet, taking a moment to assess. Then, as bile rises in his throat, he decides it's maybe not such a good idea. The more he sees the more unhinged with anger he feels himself becoming. The man has the boy down on his knees, knife pressed against the back of his neck to ensure the child can't pull away from the burden in his mouth. Frank gives up looking, gives up planning; as if he really needed anything other than his instincts and the burning hot rage behind his eyes to take out this particular scumbag.

His steps are near silent upon approach, but he would guess that the guy is a little engrossed to be particularly alert. The kid, on the other hand, flicks his eyes up without moving the rest of his head. They are wide and tear-filmed. Terrified. Frank lifts one finger to his mouth in the universal gesture for _keep quiet._ The boy simply closes his eyes tight against everything, almost as if in prayer, but Frank thinks more of a _fuck everything here goes nothing_ gesture to the universe. Or maybe it's just _please._ Frank's not really in a mindset for small details, not with this much rage.   
  
Precise and silent, he pulls the man's knife wielding hand out and away, snaps the bones of his wrists in a swift movement. He hefts the man backwards, pulling his cock out of the boy's mouth with a sound more sickening than the previous cracking of bones.

Frank has his gun out and shoved hard against the man's jaw before the bastard can even speak in protest.

“Turn around, okay? Face the fence. Don't look,” Frank says to the shaking boy the softest voice he can muster. He nods and Frank tries to look reassuring, for all it's worth now.

He drags the man towards the brick wall. When he starts to struggle Frank twists the gun into his skin, hissing, “Don't you even fucking think about it. Do you fucking know who I am?”   
At this, the man twists his neck to look, meets Frank's venomous gaze head-on, and blanches. Frank smiles cold rage, as if to say without words, _yes, that's right. Frank Iero._

Frank kicks the backs of the man's knees, pushes his head against the dirty bricks, and puts a bullet in the back of his skull. He doesn't bother to pull up the man's pants, even as they tangle around his legs when Frank drags him around the corner, out of the boy's view. He doesn't deserve that kind of respect.

  
When he turns back to the boy, he's still facing the chain link dutifully, though he's shaking violently. He's maybe not as young as Frank had thought, but he looks tiny against the expanse of dull criss-crossing metal. Upon approach, Frank feels something in him shift. No longer deadly, no longer swift. As if he's not his persona any longer. 

“You can turn around, it's okay.” The boy does, albeit it slowly. His face is pale and young-looking, streaked with tears. His eyes are wild as he looks around, as though he didn't hear the gunshot and is expecting the man to emerge from behind a corner. 

“It's okay, okay? You're okay,” Frank is shit at this comforting gig. But the kid's eyes latch onto his regardless, and Frank isn't at all sure what to offer. A hug, any contact really, seem like crossing a line that has already been trampled today.   
He spots a pair of glasses on the ground, stoops to pick them up. “Hey. Are these yours?” The boy nods, reaches out a trembling hand to retrieve them.   
“Th- Thank you. F-For everything.”

Frank smiles, as real a smile as he can manage in the face of things. “No problem. You're safe now, that's what matters.” Now Frank had to see about getting him back into safe hands. “What's your name?”  
  
The boy looks up through mousy brown bangs, opens his mouth to answer, then ---   
  
“MIKEY!”

Frank is yanked roughly backwards, landing on his back. His vision blurs for a moment upon impact but there's no mistaking that scarf.   
  
Gerard is standing above him, revolver pointed between Frank's eyes.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say how terribly sorry I am for our loss. I wasn't entirely sure if it was even appropriate to post in light of recent events, and truthfully I'm still not sure. If you are offended in any way by me posting, please let me know what I can do to resolve that. Ultimately, my intention is to keep going, posting fanfiction with the same reasoning as the lovely people on tumblr posting MCR edits and photos still. That is, if we let the fandom die, then I feel that that's when the band is truly gone.  
> Sorry for rambling, thanks for reading.  
> Long live the MCRmy.

_Gerard is standing above him, revolver pointed between Frank's eyes._  
  


***

His hand doesn't waver, even as he calls Mikey over.   
Mikey comes forward shaking, and Frank is torn between keeping his eye on the gun and trying to catch Mikey's gaze, get him to call Gerard off. But it doesn't appear Mikey is looking at Frank, or at much of anything at all. The kid's eyes are unfocused, glasses held limply at his side.   
  
“Mikey, Mikey love. Are you okay hun?” Gerard's voice is low and soft, delicate in every way the harsh angles of the gunmetal aren't. Gerard stoops to pull Mikey close, aim on Frank's face steady. He isn't even looking at Mikey, eyes cold slits locked onto Frank's face.

Then, Gerard recoils from Mikey, suddenly. 

“Mikey, could you go stand over there by the fence for me?” The sweetness in Gerard's voice shouldn't sound so deadly. And perhaps to Mikey, it doesn't sound this way. Because it's not meant for him. Frank knows that the they are sugar-tipped poison darts, crafted exclusively for him.   
Frank's mind clicks into an unproductive frenzy of overdrive; under normal circumstances he works well under pressure. But there isn't much normal about having the man he unwillingly dreams about pointing a gun at his head.   
  


Suddenly, Gerard is straddling him, knees spread to either side of Frank's chest. Frank squeezes his eyes shut, proximity to Gerard's crotch making his heart fight his mind for bigger frenzy. 

  
Gerard leans in, folding himself over to place his face within an inch of Frank's.   
Frank can help but watch Gerard's lips as he speaks, low and dark.   
“I thought you were bad enough, with all that self-hate and pent up cock lust,” Gerard pauses, licks his lips. Frank glances up to meet Gerard's eyes, and they are the kind of fire that aims to destroy. “But you're a fucking pervert. Fucking preying on children, you're the worst kind of faggot.” 

Frank splutters, understanding coming with a fresh wave of nausea. “No! No, I wouldn't, I didn't – “   
“Oh, really? Because the fucking  _cock_ I can smell on my  _little brother's breath_ says fucking otherwise,” Gerard hisses low, jamming the gun hard into Frank's temple. 

“No, it wasn't – “ Frank tries to protest, for all the good it looks like it will do when Gerard's face is a painted over in rage, impervious to mercy.

“Hush, hush little bitch,” Gerard presses the gun against Frank's lips in an effective gesture for  _silence_. “You think it's okay to take advantage of children? Well I'm going to fuck your face and see how you fucking like it, being used like the trash you are.” 

Frank swallows hard, heart thumping like a caged jackrabbit, and lower on his anatomy, his body reacts embarrassingly, Frank unwillingly half-hardening in his slacks. Gerard shifts lower on Frank's body, rolling his hips towards Frank's face. 

“I feel teeth, I blow your fucking brains out,” Gerard says far too nonchalantly for Frank's taste. “But then again, I'm probably going to do that anyway,” He shrugs, lips pulled in a mock-thoughtful frown. “But I'll probably see what other parts of you I can use before then.”   
Frank panics, perhaps more than ever before in his violence wracked life. “No, please, Gerard, it wasn't me. Please. Just, just ask Mikey.” Frank's eyes flick over to Mikey, who stands with his back to them, facing the chain links. He flinches when Frank says his name.

Gerard, has a much more visceral reaction to Frank's utterance of Mikey's name, pistol whipping Frank across the face. “ _Do_ _ **not**_ _say his name.”_  
“But, it- it wasn't  _me_ ,” Frank splutters helplessly from a swelling split lip.   
“STOP FUCKING LYING TO ME,” Gerard's voice is a near-shriek, but something quiet manages to cut into the octaves of his venom.

“Gee,” Mikey's voice is urgent but soft. “Gee, stop.”   
Parts of Gee soften when he looks at Mikey, his eyes, his face, but not his gun hand. If Frank were in his right mind, now would be the time that he would strike, snap Gee's wrist and then his neck. 

But as it is, he's fixated on the trembling child that had the power to be either his savior or to finalize his death warrant.   
“Mikey, no. You don't know what you're talking about,” He dismisses the child, turning back to look down upon Frank, and Frank's heart sinks in recognition of impending death.   
  
It is lucky, for Frank and his heart, that Mikey seems to have a strong spine in his shaking body. Mikey reaches over and pulls on Gerard's arm, yanking the gun away from Frank's face. In the distractionof the scuffle, Frank scrambles back and away, whipping his piece out of its side holster.  
The problem arises when, as Frank takes aim Gerard, Mikey steps in front, fanning his arms out behind him to cover Gerard.

Mikey looks up at Frank, eyes bright beneath lank bangs. “Gee won't hurt you,” He says, strangely solemn. “I won't let him.”   
“Mikey!” Gerard is visibly frustrated, torn between vengeance and throwing Mikey to the ground to get there. 

“Gee,” Mikey answers Gerard's disgruntled vocalization. He keeps his eyes on Frank's as he speaks. “It- it wasn't him, Gee. He. He rescued me.”   
Frank breaks eye contact with Mikey when Gerard lets out a strangled noise. “Mikey, love. You. You may not have understood what... happened to you. You might be confu--”   
“I AM NOT FUCKING CONFUSED, GERARD!” Mikey whirls on Gerard, tension replacing tremors in his muscles. “Frank came and saved me from having some guy's --” he struggles for a second “some guy's  _dick_ in my  _mouth_. So you need to leave him alone.” Mikey's chest is heaving with the weight of departed truths. He looks Gerard hard in the eye. “He's a  _good guy_ , Gee. Okay?” Mikey takes his brother's hand and holds it, without twining fingers. Before he can catch himself, Frank finds himself thinking that there's something wonderfully pure in the gesture.   
  
Gerard is quiet now, looking down at Mikey. He's worrying his bottom lip with his teeth in something like confused remorse. But Frank hasn't dropped his guard just yet; that's what got him into this mess of misunderstanding.

Gerard looks up at Frank, lip still caught in his teeth. He blinks. Twice. Then:   
“I'm sorry, Frank.” Frank starts at hearing his name. It never occurred to him that Gerard would remember his name, even when so much more than Gerard's name was tattooed into his mind. But then again, perhaps that was the fault of violence being Frank's unspoken third parent, desensitizing him to the notion of death threats as a reason to remember someone's face. Another reason still could be Frank's tangle of feelings towards the man, a constant shifting battle of  _I want to kill him and this part of myself_ versus  _I would die just to touch his fucking lips._ In the moments where he can forget himself, helped along by the comforting veil of alcohol, he feels such an indescribable  _pull_ towards the enigmatic prostitute that he can't imagine ever have threatened to destroy something so precious.   
  
And then, in the cutting light and lucidity of the morning, he wants to put a bullet in Gerard's burningly pretty face. And another in his own far less remarkable head.   
  
Looking now at the gun in his hand, and then focusing on the man standing at the other end of it, he wonders where on the spectrum his sympathies lay in this moment. But there was a credo that Frank had, called to mind at this moment.   
  
 _Trust no one._  
  
That included Frank himself. Right now, if Frank was to be blunt with himself, he was in no condition to be making judgment calls like whether or not to take the life of a (reasonably?) innocent man, in front of his surely traumatized kid brother.   
  
So he holsters his weapon, and looks at Mikey. “Are you alright?”  
  
Mikey looks up at Gerard, where there are no answers that Frank can see. Then he nods, shaky like his conclusion on his well-being.   
  
“Good. Stay that way.” Nodding curtly, and allowing himself no parting glances at Gerard, he turns to leave. He reaches the mouth of the alley before his name is called out.   
  
“Frank!” Frank closes his eyes briefly. Maybe says a prayer of sorts, hand back on his holster. He turns, and Gerard is there, looking rumpled and slightly breathless despite the distance he had crossed being minimal. When Frank's eyes hit his, Gerard speaks again. “I -I mean. Mr. Iero.”   
  
Frank frowns, a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden wave of formality. “Uhm,” He almost says that Frank is fine. But stops himself. The coldness, the distance manufactured by the title “Mr. Iero” is, Frank's senses tell him, a good idea. “Yeah?”  
  
“I- uh,” Gerard licks his lips. Starts again. “I just. I'm sorry, again. And. I want to make it up to you,” The end of the sentence lilts upwards, like a question. “To be clear, I am not, by any means, trying to proposition you.” He looks up at Frank, looking very young. “I understand now that you are not... like that. I'm sorry for the mistake. But I wanted to know what I could do to make it up to you, that misunderstanding. And to thank you. For saving Mikey.”   
Frank stands, trying not to notice the way the pale white of the sunlight backlit Gerard and his curls of hair. “There's nothing I need from you,” Frank says, gruff. 

Gerard stands, considering. “It's against my code of living to leave a debt unpaid.”

At this, Frank's eyes widen the tiniest bit. A street whore with values he could respect was not a part of his reluctant carnal fantasy. “I'm sorry,” Frank says, not sure why he is apologizing to the man who had, very recently, threatened him with sexual assault and a gun. “I have men who work beneath me,”  _oh shit, and did that sound not at all like Frank intended._ Attempting to recover: “I have subordinates, if I need anything done.”   
  
Gerard goes back to worrying his full bottom lip in a way that Frank would like to both stop immediately and preserve forever. Then, he reaches inside his pocket, retrieving a small rectangle of paper. Frank's eyes follow Gerard's pale hand as he passes the paper over.   
  
“If you think of anything, please get in touch with me,” Gerard says. “And thank you. Again.”   
Frank looks up, nods at Gerard, who takes it as a dismissal and turns back to gather up Mikey and leave.  
  
Frank walks a bit, into the alley. When he is safely out of view, he looks down at the card of paper. It is handmade, a business card. Adorned with Gerard's name in a small but ornate Gothic-looking font. The only other thing on the card is an address. Frank reads the card over, eyes tracing the curve of the G in Gerard.   
  
He reads it over three more times, then pockets it.   
He thinks back to Mikey, and the moment when his life was placed in the shaking hands of a small scared boy.  
Frank knows now that that was a mistake, that Mikey never had his hands on Frank's death certificate -- that document resided now in Frank's pocket, stamped with Gerard's name and waiting for Frank's own signature to finalize the execution.  


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter; I feel really terrible about the lack of updating so I tried to get something down. Things have gotten tough but I will try and be more consistent. Thanks for sticking around -- enjoy!

The sweat slick slide of skin on skin is nauseating in a way that creeps under Frank's skin. It's all fake fake fake he's a phony and god, his body knows it. When she pulls him down atop her, palming him through his jeans, he bites back bile. He scrunches his eyes closed in the dark, breath heavy not with passion but with impending terror. He manages to get it up. But only barely. And only with the red flush of shame that matches that of the red yarn scarf flashing in his mind. He thinks of long fingers, pale and elegant, probing and deft. The smile of teeth crooked in the way he would like to imitate, crowded and overlapped with a body not soft in the ways the one beneath him. He wants hard. He wants rough. And then he wants, for once in his godforsaken life, comfort. Security.

His breath shakes, murmuring little nonsense things sweet things that serve to empty himself, saccharine garbage that he has no use for. The girl, she's moaning and writhing and doing everything right in the ways that Frank does everything absolutely wrong. He's mindless about copulating with a female in the way he's always been before, but now it's just a little bit worse. And that's the way most of everything is, honestly; it's all the same really, just worse. Because now he knows of an alternative, has nearly tasted it, the man in the scarf and the sharp edge of danger beneath it. He knows now that the boy he saved that was a damnation in disguise of a good deed.   
  
The mound of flesh warm beneath him is shrieking now, and Frank is grateful in a hollow way because he's acted well enough, he's gotten away with it again. So she screams and arches and Frank falsifies his own small vocalizations _baby, baby so good. gonna cum baby._ It's a lie, nearly always has been. There's no difference, really, in the darkness. He's cold more than cordial, rolling off and disposing of the latex lacking residue. He dismisses the girl, after, pulling his rank.   
  
There is no amount of hot water that can scrub the feel of her off his body. The scalding, though, the reddening of his skin are a decent alternative to stripping off his flesh entirely. As if he could change the form that betrayed him, the phallus hanging limp and pathetic between his legs as if it hadn't betrayed him all his life, stiffening at all the wrong pronouns.   
  
For the moments alone that he has no business for the family to attend to, he curls up, naked and still, hair dripping onto the expensive bedsheets. The moments alone, like this, are maybe the worst. Where hard as he may try, he's running out of places to hide from himself. Where he tries to see nothing and feel nothing so he can maybe convince himself that he is nothing, and that the best kiss of his life hadn't died in front of him that there wasn't a man with long fingers and a pretty mouth that he couldn't forget that he wasn't a faggot that he was strong like his father thought he was that he didnt want to die that he was a puddle that he was shapeless nothing wrong nothing to destroy nothing nothing nothingnothingnothing  
  
But it never works as well as he needs it to.   
He still sees, still has the betrayal of a heart beat thumping along much too loud for his liking. Joey's still dead and for reasons Franks tries hard to avoid, there's still a small card of paper in the bottom of his drawer and its silence is getting louder by the day.   
  
  
He doesn't know how long he can keep this up.  


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say that I adore every one of you? I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to read comments from you guys, and I am endlessly appreciative of all the kudos and compliments. Thank you -- and have I mentioned that con-crit or feedback of any kind is entirely welcome? Because it is. Okay -- enjoy!

He's spared by an inch. The concrete just left of his ear explodes and that's the cue, that's the snap in his brain that tears through his parasympathetic nervous system, flipping switches for autonomic responses; his gun out, eyes sharp, feet swift and shoulders down. This is the place where he feels like himself still, where in fight versus flight his instincts take over and decide upon the former, every time. It's a version of himself that he can actually handle. He's all nerve endings and adrenaline, stripped down to violence and instinct.  
  
It's from across the street, gunfire from an alley. Frank sprints, presses himself flat against a wall and returns fire, naturally, naturally, motions mechanical all swift deadly accuracy. But it's closer this time, his mortality. The guys, Romano's boys by the looks of it, they're good. Which is bad. It means that that the bullets are a little closer, shots a little cleaner, death looming thick overhead. __  
  
But Frank breathes it in like it's fresh mountain air, adrenaline singing in his veins. Something about the violence feels almost purifying. It's what he knows, it's his redemption. If people think the Iero family is bad, then they don't have any idea what it would be like to have one of the other families running the city. In a perch in his mind, Frank's built up a kind of identity for himself. Where he tries to balance good and bad and be above all his sins. He likes to think, in a very small place inside of himself, that he is helping people by keeping the really evil people in line. It's a justification, he knows, him trying to explain away bloodstains and family members somewhere who are grieving in the same way his mama would if she had her boy in a box.  
  
( _Her boy belongs in a box._ ) It's a whisper of a thought that breezes through his head with greater and greater frequency. But now is not a time for him to stop and listen, not when there's people depending on him. But it's a distraction all the same, a mental rock that he stumbles over, breaking the smooth concrete of his concentration for a moment that counts for everything. He blinks, focused lost and found again with a moment's lapse. One of his men, Marco, shoves him out of the line of a bullets Frank failed to predict and Marco takes it in the arm as a result, a bit of the small blood splatter catching Frank across the face.   
  
“Shit!” Frank curses, pushing himself flat against the wall again. He tries to click back into his former clarity, watching as Marco shoots, cringing in pain. He can't do this. Can't be this way. Something's gotta give.  
  
After a few long moments of exchanging fire, Romano's goons take heavy losses and flee. Frank doesn't give the order to pursue; they've got a fatality themselves. Christian's laying spread out on the sidewalk, mouth glistening with blood coughed up from a wounded lung and eyes glossed over with the sheen of death. Marco's slumped against the wall, panting. There's various other injuries and Frank knows when to fold for the good of the group. It's unacceptable, his slipping up, and he needs to change, needs to fix himself. This can't happen again.  
  
***  
  
He burns the card.  
But not before he memorizes it.  
  
***  
  
His footsteps sound foreign. They don't sound the way he remembers; they're uncertain and light. Like he's scared.  
He is scared.  
  
It's cold in the street-light flickering darkness, it's the definite 3 AM feeling and it's settled into his chest like a bad cough. It's the hollow point bullet of loneliness and isolation all edged with self-loathing and he doesn't know if he wants someone to take his finger off the trigger or push down on it for him.  
  
That's how he finds himself here, maybe. He doesn't know how to fix himself, but he knows he has to do something. It's that old teetering point, the old tight-rope walker routine. This will either destroy him or save him but he's tired of not knowing which. For all he cares, he could end up in a pine box, but he will not be the reason why someone else does.   
  
His breath dissipates visibly into the cutting cold of the air, and he shivers just a little bit. He's all layers tonight. Fedora pulled low over his eyes, overcoat over his vest and suit, leather gloves. He resisted the scarf at the last minute, the color red flashing behind his eyelids. His eyes scan the dim lighting; he's taking a lesser populated back street that's near abandoned at this hour – it runs parallel to the one he needs, so the address numbers match up. It's a countdown in his head, really. He could turn around and go back home. There's still room in this noose for him to slip out.  
The numbers tick down until he's on the 600 block. His heart thumps wild and painful against his ribs. If he feels like he's shaking it's because he is. He reaches the corner and looks down the darkness into the alleyway.  
  
He could turn back. He could. But he won't.  
  
He instead takes that first step into the alley, engaging a kind of autopilot not dissimilar to the trance of violence he locks himself into. Head bent low, eyes sharp, hand in his coat around his .22.  
  
He sees Gerard before Gerard sees him. Or, more precisely, he's sees the red of his scarf cast in the dirty light of a flickering streetlamp. _That fucking scarf._ It makes Frank feel sick in a kind of way that only hits his heart. Makes him dizzy.  
  
Frank steps up behind him, heart thumping a mad tattoo and a nervous adrenaline making him fight to keep his voice steady. He puts on a mask. He can do this. He is an Iero. He can do anything.  
  
“Keep quiet or I'll shoot you.” His voice doesn't reflect his quivering insides. He's proud of himself in a sick kind of way.

Gerard turns slowly, hands held up near his shoulders and fingers splayed in pacification. He smiles slow and with a tilt of his head, not a single line of surprise etched onto his gorgeous features.  
  
“Hiya Frankie baby.” His whisper is velvet and it coats Frank's spine.  
  
That noose tightens around Frank's neck now and he realizes there was never any escaping for him after all.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah you guys are lovely and patient and I am terrible about updating when life is in the way. I am terribly sorry for having taken so long! Anyway, here it is. Additionally when I was procrastinating finishing this chapter, I put together a lil mix for this section. You can find that here: ( http://8tracks.com/haligh/c-mere-babydoll ) It's centered around this most recent chapter but also encompasses themes from the story as a whole. It's entirely optional but if it's something that you feel enhances the narrative, let me know and I'll keep making them if you like! Happy reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated, as always. (And I know I've written a lot here as is but I read every single one of your comments and love you all for it. Thank you so much for sticking around.) xo!

“What's your poison darling?” Gerard asks, voice pitched low in the darkness of the alley. The way the word 'darling” slipped off Gerard's tongue made the endearment stick in Frank's veins like saccharine plaque. That was the poison, really, it was in the sugar, poisoned sweetness that could kill in time if Frank let it. It was dangerous because Frank could get used to it. Could let it build up in his arteries and turn his heart to deadened mush.  
  
“I'm not going to talk about this here,” Frank makes his whisper as sharp-edged as possible. He can't really see Gerard's face but can imagine it as the mask of professionalism that Gerard was wearing when they met, the same one he saw shatter when Frank threatened painting dull brick with the bright contents of Gerard's skull. Frank doesn't know which he likes better, the mask or its shards.  
  
Gerard initiates touch and it's sharp like electricity, little lightning bolts running up Frank's hip where Gerard rests his fingers. “There's motels nearby, where we could have little chat.”  
  
Frank's hand snatches Gerard's fingers from his hip using more force than strictly necessary. “No one can see me with you. You should know better.”  
  
Gerard shifts, his eyes thrown into the dirty orange of the streetlight. “My apartment is near here, if that suits your needs.”  
  
“Your apartment?” Frank is surprised despite his coolness.  
  
Gerard tilts his head, eyes finding Frank's. “You're a very powerful man Mr. Iero,” The words do strange things to Frank. It feels like he's being mocked and revered at the same time and it strokes the prideful animal curled in his chest. “I know that if you wanted to find me, there's nothing could stop you.  
  
Frank nods curtly. “Your apartment then. Lead the way. Discreetly.”  
  
“I wouldn't dream of any other way,” Gerard says with a mocking flutter of his eyelashes. He straightens then, adjusting his apparent trademark of a scarf. It seems as though he shakes off his eccentricity, sobering in a way not dissimilar to Frank preparing for confrontation with a rival family. Frank makes this connection and if it unsettles him he does not have time to think much on it as Gerard's coat is whipping around the corner when he looks up.  
  
***  
  
Gerard's apartment can barely be called that. It's tiny, with sparse makeshift furnishing. As Frank steps in he realizes the walls are uneven in their texture. There's a small light on in the corner, like a nightlight of sorts. By the meager illumination Frank makes out that the walls are covered with scraps of paper, napkins and wrappers decorated with drawings, mostly of the same boy in various costume, posed like a warrior or a superhero. Nestled among the sketches are flyers of the sort found plastered en masse on city walls. They advertise traveling circuses, fairs, plays. It serves to make the room look hectic, and even smaller than without the visual trick.  
  
There's the sharp snap of the door closing and Frank steps aside to allow for Gerard to take the lead. If Gerard notices Frank's scrutiny of the decorated walls, he makes no effort towards explanation. Gerard makes his way towards a door across the room, and Frank, with no other given direction, follows.  
  
Frank lingers in the doorway of what seems to be the master bedroom, master by default of it being the only bedroom. Gerard kneels by the bed, reaching over to shake gently a sleeping mass. It's Mikey, some sensical part of Frank's brain puts together amdist the haze of anxious surrealness.  
  
Gerard's murmuring, quiet and soothing. “C'mon Mikeymouse, just for a little bit.”  
  
Mikey sits up and shuffles out of bed, sleepy feet moving slow across the floorboards. Everything about him is small and weary, but when he passes Frank he looks up at him with eyes that are examining and alert, too-knowing for his age. Gerard follows him, one hand between his shoulder blades. He walks him over to the far end of the room, which is none to distant, and tucks him into a nest of bedding on the floor. Frank feels a sharp stab of pity for the child whose life is wrong in all sorts of ways. But Gerard bends and kisses Mikey on the forehead and when he straightens again to look at Frank, his eyes are already on, the full blast bright of lustiness in the dimness of the cramped room.  
  
He walks past Frank, into the darkened bedroom and needs no more than the look he gives Frank as indication that Frank should follow. Frank does, and as he enters Gerard switches on a solitary lamp in the corner of the room, draped with a gauzy scarf much unlike the heavy scarlet thing that had yet to leave Gerard's neck. It casts the room in a light that only serves to add further disorientation to the entire scene, surreal to Frank because he could not yet believe he was in it. It was like a kind of leave of absence for Frank in a way that was pleasant; he felt detached from his mind insofar as Gerard was having a curiously soothing effect on the dark things that prowled along it's periphery. His body, though, felt painfully alert, prickling and antsy, anticipation running like an electrical current.  
  
Gerard's eyes sweep over Frank and land on his eyes. “What would you like to talk about Mr. Iero?” He asks with a tilt of his head and the slow pull of pink tongue over generous lips.  
  
“Well, we could talk about that attitude of yours,” Frank says, tone sharp, proud of how well he's kept his quavering insides from breaking into his voice.  
  
“My attitude?” His voice is mock surprise. He's stepping forward, looking up through his eyelashes. He's feigning the innocence that Frank knows likely hasn't been present for a long while; Gerard is young still but he's expert if you ask Frank, at filthy little baitings, dipped in sin and spread out like he were waiting to be consumed.  
  
Frank bites subtle at the inside of his lips. He wants control, he thinks. He wants this to not feel so much like this is a surrender to the disease that makes him want Gerard's flesh.  
  
“And what,” Gerard breathes into the silence between them. “Do you propose we do about my... attitude?” The last word is spoken just short of Frank's mouth, tendril of warm sweet breath unraveling over his lips and shooting straight down into his lungs to stop him short of air. It's something like a panic mode, having the the threat of intimacy be such a tangibly imminent thing, and somewhere in his detached mind there is the stern whisper of _LEAVE,_ a plea to preserve some illusion of his own purity.  
  
But he doesn't. He does the opposite. He takes a step forward, and as Gerard happens to be in that space, Frank reaches out and shoves him. _Hard._ He topples onto the bed with an unpleasant squeak of protest from the bedframe. Frank would presume that Gerard were surprised but it doesn't show on his face. He is instead laying where Frank has pushed him, face kept still and polished in a mask of delicate arranged submissiveness. He is holding himself very in a way that makes it seem like he's not trying but Frank knows that beneath the glossy sheen of sex there lay a chameleon man melding into whatever he perceives is desired.  
  
Frank wants to break him, he thinks.  
  
But that's only a part of himself, perhaps. His machismo bubbling to the surface out of pools of self hate. There's an angry part of him that wants to destroy what he sees of himself in Gerard, in order to retain some semblance of dignity. And as Frank steps forward to cast his shadow over Gerard's wanton form, a smaller part of himself maybe whispers that if he wants to break Gerard it may be because he wants to know the man beneath the act.  
  
Frank tells everything in his head to shush when he yanks Gerard up by his collar and sinks down into his lap, pressing his mouth against Gerard's in a violent clash of teeth driven by the force of Frank's barely submerged self-hate. Gerard lets out little whimpers that fucking _do things_ to Frank, namely shooting straight to his cock. A shift of weight has them falling down against the bed, pinning Gerard beneath Frank. The place where their mouths connect is a thing of violence as if chemical reactions were taking place at the contact of their tongues, minor explosions contained in the heated space between them. Frank sees red behind his eyelids, the bright blood red, the yarn of Gerard's scarf. He _wants,_ blindly and heatedly and it is exhausting in the way that it feels like it's tugging at the seams of his being. Frank is writhing in Gerard's lap, frantic and rhythm-less, fish out of water in action and sentiment. He's connected to Gerard's mouth as if it were his air supply, gasping when Gerard breaks away.  
  
“Mr. Iero --” He exhales, looking up at Frank through thick lashes.  
  
“Frank.” Frank corrects. Mr. Iero sounds too much like the father he's trying not to remember in this moment.  
  
“Well, Frank, I know what you want to do to me,” Gerard's eyes shine in the dimly lit space, running his hand down Frank's chest.  
  
“What?” Frank is caught off the guard he thought he had likely surrendered at the outset of this sinful venture.  
  
“You want to hurt me, Frankie darling. I've seen the look a hundred times,” This catches Frank a little, the honest of it, the accuracy. There's a surrender of an illusion here that Frank thought a whore would never disclose; isn't he supposed to be made to feel like he is the only lay Gerard has ever had? Frank feels strangely privileged for the honesty. “If that's what you want, then by all means. Feel free to hurt.” He looks Frank in the eye as he speaks, fingers still ghosting over Frank's form. “But, if you'll let me, I can make this amazing for you.” His hand sinks down to Frank's crotch, cock hard in a blatant way, straining against the material. Gerard rubs with a practiced hand over the bulge, looking up at Frank inquiringly.  
  
One of the things that eeks through the distraction of Gerard's palm is the question of whether Gerard knows that this is his first time with a man. Wonders if there is a look or scent that Gerard has detected. Frank is jerking idly into Gerard's hand; it feels fucking heavenly for a thing so steeped in sin. His body has ideas ahead of his brain, leaning and arching into the touch. He bites his lip and whispers low. “Yeah. D-do whatever you n-need.” Through half-lidded eyes, he sees Gerard smile, wicked in a way that suits the face that Frank damns for being beautiful.  
  
"Honey, that's the second best decision you've made all night.” Gerard reclines, bringing Frank down against the bed with him.  
“And the first?” Frank mutters against Gerard's lips.  
“Well, coming to see me of course,” Gerard answers and Frank can fucking feel him smirk right before he crushes their mouths together.  
  
***  
  
His three piece suit is scattered across the floor in a way that disrespects the Italian imported material. The other crumpling of clothes should be occurring but, for no reason that Frank can see, mysteriously isn't. Though he can't exactly complain, doesn't have the presence of mind to with Gerard in his vision, crawling and naked, eyes dark and boring into Frank's. He is lithe and almost predatory, a definite shift from the show of submissiveness he put on earlier. He is a master in his own right and Frank knows any sort of proficiency in the hands of the right person to be a deadly thing indeed. But when Gerard crawls over Frank's legs, it seems Frank knows nothing, mind going smooth and blank of everything except the sensation of Gerard's parting Frank's legs, scraping teeth lightly against delicate inner thigh. Frank gasps at the sensation, absolutely apart from any other experience he's had before. Pretty girls with disposable faces, afraid of smearing their lipstick; too delicate, too perfect.  
  
Gerard's hair is rebelling against his scalp, sticking in every feasible direction. He's wanton and messy and fucking gorgeous in the low light and holy mother he is panting hot against the thinly-clothed form of Frank's dick. Gerard has his mouth pressed against it, every exhale sending shivers up Frank's spine; Gerard's eyes are closed as if in prayer and his mouth is forming silent words against it to boot. Frank is leaking through the fabric and he _wants_ , wants now want hard wants messy and if Gerard doesn't take action in the next split second Frank is going to grab him by the hair and force him as far down on his cock as his pretty throat with allow.  
  
Luckily, Gerard does move, in swift dark movements he has Frank's underwear off and thrown to the side. Frank's head lolls back against the headboard at the wet heat of contact from Gerard's mouth. It's close to magical, maybe, the way Gerard's expert tongue swirls around the head of his aching cock, it's a dark magic, maybe, and for everything that is holy – Frank feels Gerard's throat opening to accommodate his entire length. Frank moans, loud and high and without any regard for the presumably sleeping child in the next room over. Gerard is bobbing up and down, and Frank's entire body feels warm as Gerard's throat opens and closes around him, his fingers massaging his balls. Frank doesn't think he can fucking hold out if the onslaught continues much longer, the hands and the heat and the tight wet space and then – it's gone. Gerard pulls completely off and Frank wants to scream in frustration, hips arching upward and hitting open air.  
  
Gerard shushes him softly, appearing to make some sort of adjustment and then sinking back down to take Frank in full, pulling another strangled sound from Frank's throat. Frank's excitation is cut short, however, when he realizes that Gerard is yet again pulling off entirely. Frank wants to grab that disgustingly pretty face by the hair and force him back down, and Gerard likely reads this sentiment right off Frank's flushed face. And in the face of this sexual violence, Gerard smiles, licking his lips and offering a wink that somehow manages to look smooth instead of awkward.  
  
“If you liked that trick you're gonna love the next one, darling.” Gerard reaches over to retrieve a small bottle from the night stand, squeezing the substance inside it onto his palm. Frank blinks, slightly disoriented in the heat of it all, watches and gasps lightly as Gerard wraps a firm hand around Frank's swollen member, which, he notes with surprise is sheathed in a condom? He makes a vague connection with Gerard's brief delay mid-blowjob and somewhere in the back of his fuzzed-out head he is impressed.  
“I'm gonna do all the work for you baby, okay? Don't worry about a thing.” Gerard says, slightly out of breath, but crooked smile in place.   
  
Frank can not only not worry he can also not think of a single thing outside how good and firm Gerard's fist feels, even through the barrier of the condom. But it's not his pretty mouth, that's for sure, and god does Frank feels the absence keenly, his eyes sliding shut and body taking over, hips bucking upwards after the ghost of Gerard's lips.  
  
It's a small sound from Gerard that pries Frank's eyes open again and once they're open he has no thought of being able to close them again because sweet jesus Gerard has got his left hand wrapped firm around Frank's swollen cock but with his right hand, good lord, he's kneeling, and he's got his fingers pressed up inside himself, teasing himself open, sheen of sweat on his chest and head thrown back. Frank can see his throat working while he moans soft, short and breathy. Frank is going to fucking lose it, he's gonna cum all over Gerard's hand at the mere sight of it – something's gotta happen soon or he's going to lose control.  
  
“Ge- Gerard, I –“ Frank is begging though he's not sure for what and that act only goes against everything the Family has ever instilled in him but in for a penny in for a pound Frank supposes vaguely, watching Gerard licks his lips and gaze over at him through lust-heavy eyes. “I-I need it --” It? What is it? He just. He _needs_ and now.  
  
“Don't worry darling, I've got you,” Gerard says, smiling in a blissed-out way, unsheathing his fingers from inside himself. “You just lay back, let me take care of you.” Gerard runs his hands down Frank's thighs, as if trying to smooth the muscle beneath, he leans forward, planting a kiss on the tip of Frank's needy cock. It's chaste and sweet and seems like a kind of greeting, like a kiss on the cheek. Except Frank's never had a kiss on the check serve as a precursor to what happens next: Gerard, straddling Frank's waist, positioning his supple ass over Frank's leaking hard-on, and sinking down all at once, one hand on the base of Frank's cock to guide it.  
  
Nothing has ever felt like this before. It's hot and wet and so, so tight. Frank feels the difference immediately, the head of his cock pushing in with slight resistance only to slip into the grip of fucking _heaven_ – he almost can't stand it and this is before he remembers that Gerard is likely to be actually _moving._ When his eyes slip open, Gerard is smiling soft, grazing a thumb tenderly over Frank's hipbone. When he straightens, Frank feels Gerard shift around him and groans low and guttural, rolling his hips greedily. It turns into high breathless gasps when Gerard starts to ride him, shifting up and down with little pants of his own. Shadows from the low light etch themselves across his face when he throws his hair out of his eyes and god, Frank could maybe think he were the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.  
  
“F-fuck! You're so fucking tight, oh, god,” Frank is babbling but he can't help it, strings of curses pouring from his tongue like the sweat beading and falling down Gerard's smooth chest.  
  
“Ah - ah, you,” Gerard, even being the experienced one, seems to have trouble communicating while bouncing up and down on Frank's cock. “You're so fucking big, Frankie. So th-thick.” He bites his lip, throwing his head back and grinding down on Frank. Frank gasps, feeling the way Gerard seemed to clamp down around him. He can't hold out long, and he knows that, feels heat pooling behind his navel, feels the way tendrils of warmth curl down into the tips of his toes. Gerard is pushing him to his limit, all encompassing tightness too much to handle. Despite this, he pleads.  
  
“Don't – don't stop, fuck --”  
“I'm not going to, sweetheart,” Gerard says breathily. “I'm gonna milk that cock of yours.”  
He's filthy and Frank fucking loves it, toe curling breath hitching. He's so close –  
“C'mon babydoll,” Gerard moans. “Cum inside me. F-fill me up.”  
  
Frank loses it, his orgasm tearing through his body like he's never cum before, a tidal wave that threatens to tear him apart. He comes hard inside Gerard, filling the tight space, and it's getting tighter by the second, as he looks up to see Gerard cumming, dripping over his own fist wrapped tight around his base. He can feel Gerard's muscles contracting around his cock, squeezing him like he really does intend to milk his cock for all it's worth. Frank moans with abandon, panting out a name that he is afraid might be Gerard's. He's lost that thing that he's held to so tightly, given it up – he's lost control, even by coming here, and on the tail end of a tidal-wave of an orgasm, he maybe feels like it's all worth it.  
  
Gerard pulls off of him and Frank becomes boneless, panting and exhausted, body still heaving after surrendering what he had so long denied himself.  
  
Gerard, somehow, seems to have skeleton intact, sliding smoothly to his feet. He maybe smiles at Frank but Frank wouldn't trust his eyes at this point, eyelids too heavy to be counted on. Gerard crosses to the door and shuts it behind him as he exits the small bedroom. Frank lays still and listens to the sound of his own breathing begin to even out, thankful for the aftermath of the orgasm resulting in the emptying of his mind.  
When Gerard returns, he's clad in a robe that has seen better days and holding a damp rag. Gently, he wipes the splashes of cum off Frank's abdomen, taking extra care around his softened but still-sensitive dick. Frank blinks up at him lazily, sensing there's something he should be saying or doing but not sure what it could be. And then it occurs to him, cutting through the haze of his brain by sheer force of sincerity.  
  
“Thank you.” He says, looking at Gerard. Gerard blinks, as if he were taken aback, as if for the first time since they began this encounter, Frank had caught him off his expert guard.  
Gerard sits beside him, bed springs creaking. “I don't know if anyone's ever said that to me before,” He says, looking down at his knees and then up at Frank.  
  
“Oh.” And that's all Frank can think to say.  
  
***  
  
Gerard goes so far as to push away Frank's hand. “I appreciate the gesture but I just can't accept that from you.” 2  
“I want you to have it. It wouldn't feel right,” It maybe already doesn't feel right, Frank's skin is starting to feel tight and he wants to get out of here.  
“You saved Mikey,” Gerard says in a low voice. “You've done enough.”  
  
Frank looks at him, shakes his head at the steadfastness. _Testa dura._  
  
He exits the bedroom, struck by another thought. He walks over to the nest of blankets where Gerard had so carefully lain Mikey, and is greeted by the glint of eyes, illuminated by a stray beam of moonlight. Frank thought he might be awake. Frank would be.  
  
He kneels down, keenly aware of Gerard standing behind him.

“Hi again,” Frank says. “Your brother did me a real big favor and I wanna repay him for it. But he's being stubborn, so do you think that you could take this for me and make sure that he gets ahold of it?” Frank holds out a wad of bills that he's fairly certain is excess, even in this line of work.  
  
Mikey nods, pulling his hand from beneath the mound of blankets to retrieve the money.  
  
“Thank you, Mikey,” Frank says softly. He's not exactly surprised when Mikey nods again soundlessly; he didn't much strike Frank as a talker.  
  
He straightens and makes for the door, ignoring the likely glare to the back of the head he's earned from Gerard.  
  
“Goodnight Gerard,” He says quietly, one hand on the door knob.  
  
“Goodnight, Mr. Iero,” Gerard says and Frank's mouth quirks upon hearing the formality slid back into place. “I don't suppose I'll be seeing you again, but thank you for letting me return the favor.”  
  
Frank gives a curt nod, tipping his hat with a leather-gloved finger. Then he's out the door, hallway of the run-down apartment building half-lit with dusty moonlight. He feels the words in his chest, _don't suppose I'll be seeing you again._ The problem is that they're not in his heart, where they should be at rest, in a pine box locked tight like the one Joey and Henry Swanko resided in. These feeling, these unholy urges, they should be buried. Sealed tight and kissed chastely goodbye.  
  
The problem is that the words, swirling in the cave he refers to as a chest, feel much closer to his lungs, trapped in the lining of the delicate respiratory muscle, laying in wait to be remembered every time Frank took a breath.  
  
So was it the solution that he should stop breathing altogether?  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay!

When he returned home that night, bodily and emotionally exhausted, he hadn't had much a thought for what the light of the next morning would bring. If he had to supply a notion, however vague, it would maybe be the imagery of vomiting up his intestines – an attempt to purify by bile the insides that must be poisoned, have to be if his body is confused enough to accept man flesh in place of woman's. It was the feeling that followed him from the first time his mind supplied commentary on his same sex, against his will.

  
But he didn't feel this way. No nausea, no venom. For once, no exceptional force behind the loathing he paid his reflection. Instead, he felt a strange sort of disconnect from the thoughts that had plagued him in the _before,_  ideas like flies constantly divebombing his head, pursuing the rottenness of his insides. No, he felt almost... _lighter_ in a strange way. Not in a way he'd ever felt before. Not like something in him had been scraped out and abandoned like so many other times (losing Swanko, losing Joey, the dozens of other lights he'd personally watched vanish from the eyes of good men); it was more as if some of the deadness of him had floated up through the ceiling, dissipating while he slept. He couldn't really articulate it, even if he wanted to. Which he so ardently did not, frightened of upsetting the strange balance struck within his conscience.   
  
Frankly speaking, he felt... better.   
  
He sat on the edge of his bed, gray tinged sunlight doing it's best to eek in through the windows. He can't sit around here all day, prodding the mess of feelings congealing in his stomach. It is Sunday. He has a date.  
  
***  
  
The house is scented lightly of lilacs, and, as you stepped further in, heavily scented of tomatoes and baking and _warmth_. He can practically feels his spirit leaning into it mlike cold hands over a fire.   
  
“Take your shoes off!”   
  
There is maybe nothing that makes him smile more than this reprimand, the same one every week, as if didn't purposely seek out matching socks in the morning in anticipation. He slips off the maybe too-fine leathers and sets them neatly by the door, rounding the corner with a smile at the edges of his lips.   
  
“Frankie!” She has a wooden spoon in her hand and a twinkle in her eye and Frank beams a little in spite of his demeanor. She kisses him on the cheek leaving crinkled red imprints of the lipstick that ran into the wrinkles of her lips.   
  
“Hi ma,” He smiles, pulling away. “These are for you.” The bouquet is at the high end of modest, abundant but not extravagant. He overpaid for them when he didn't need to pay at all; it was an old local business and they did good work. Nice old lady, not unlike the one that stood before him now.

“You didn't have to,” she says, but she's inhaling deeply, nose buried amongst flowers and smiling. It does good things for Frank's heart. Today might be the first good day in a nightmarish streak of unpleasant ones. She bustles around the kitchen island, reaching to get a vase. Frank would get it for her but he doesn't need the talking-to about his mother's arms which were “working just fine, thank you.”   
  
Her fierce grip on autonomy was part of what kept a caretaker out of her house, regardless of Frank's thoughts on the subject. It was hard but it had always been hard and anything else must feel, he thinks, like the pain of an absence of well-known pressure. But he thinks, in another part of himself, that his mom deserves a break no matter how sturdy her own two hands are.   
  
“Dad sleeping?” He asks, pulling up a chair at the counter and taking it upon himself to seek out the corner piece in a plate of focaccia.   
  
“Either that or he wants to be left alone,” She answers, wrinkled fingers deftly straightening stems and adjusting leaves.   
  
“Hmm,” He makes a non-committal noise for a subject that he, aptly, doesn't want to commit to. Like some psychoanalytic bullshit, he's afraid of what his father means to him, afraid of what kind of guilt it has the potential to etch beneath his skin when he thinks about the sheets he spent last night in. It threatens his newly happened upon balance, the overwhelming potential for inside-rotting guilt pent up by a haphazard dam of avoidance.  
  
His father isn't dying, but Frank thinks he might as well be. He's losing it. It being everything, really. He doesn't remember Frank on bad days and is hazy on even the good ones.   
  
“How is he?” He ventures into an area he doesn't actually want to know intimately. But his mother doesn't deserve to shoulder it all alone.   
  
Her smile is small and sad but intact. “He didn't remember me this morning when I brought him breakfast.” Frank bites the inside of his lip. Hard. “He said, hello, _bella._ He asked me if I had a boyfriend.”   
  
“What did you say?” Voice smaller, voice tentative.   
  
“I said I do, and that he's very handsome.” She smiles, still small. “And he said, 'run away with me, he may be more handsome but I am a better man. I will treat you like a princess.'” She waves her hands while she speaks and Franks recognizes the ghost of his father's gestures, imprinted on the backs of her hands like upraised veins.   
Frank can picture it so clearly it hurts. His father, storyteller, family man in the center of the hearth.   
  
“Thank you for the flowers, sweetheart.”   
He's glad he brought them.   
  
***  
  
His mom is fucking magic, he swears. He's drowsy and warm and something dangerously nearing content. The sorcery might be in the copious amounts of minestrone soup or maybe the bruschetta or hey, potentially it was the tenth piece of focaccia topped with hard cheese that tipped him into the rarity of a good mood.   
“I'm glad you're here, Frankie,” His mom speaks over the brim of her iced tea.   
“I'm here every week, ma. I wouldn't miss it.” He answers easily, only half focused, a little full a little drowsy.   
“Yes, but. You're more here this week.” She speaks slowly and with an impossibility of omnipotence. “You haven't seemed like yourself in a while, baby.”   
  
Frank is suddenly more awake. He sits up a little, almost slipping on his business mask, the one he used as a professional, negotiating things like murder and how to keep drugs out of school zones. But he doesn't, consciously, he doesn't. This is his ma. This is the kitchen. This is _safety_.   
  
He shrugs. The business takes a toll. She knows that better than nearly anyone.   
  
“I'm just glad, is all. It feels like you've come home after a long trip,” She speaks softly and Frank is maybe not so comfortable like this, not when he's used to her as a spit fire take-no-shit kinda lady. “I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but I think feelings never really do. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I love you, Frankie, and that you have to do what keeps you this way. What keeps you whole.”   
  
He wonders how transparent he really is. His skin is screaming a name he doesn't want to hear clearly, remembering the electric charge, the forbidden completion of a circuit. Feelings.   
  
Then, quietly,   
“I love you too, ma.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am the literal worst but I am so grateful to the people who have taken the time to read and comment despite my general shoddiness. Thank you and enjoy, xo.

He barely registers when the blood spatters warm across his face. He knows, on some level, what it is and what it means. But everything else feels sort of like a dream a nightmare something hazy and choking that he doesn't know how to wake from. He doesn't feel awake feels heavy and dumb he screams though it's not him in pain the blood is warm the person it came from isn't.  
  
***  
  
The body is heavy and warm and oddly comforting as a result. Then he remembers that the warmth is fading fast and the weight is so leaden because it's absolutely limp. Frank is small and fast and that is an advantage, always has been but it's not enough this time. They're gunning for him, specifically, he knows it, heard them yelling “bring him in alive” as if he were a particularly valuable bargaining chip. He is, actually – proof being the minefield of bodies strewn about in the narrow brick passageway, the once-living obstacles he's skirting around, trying hard not to look into the faces of. He knows it's a mix of enemies and family and right now it's better for him to detach and think of them all as the former. It was a minute of failure on his part and he's paying the price now for the lack of attentiveness that allowed him to overlook the tell-tales of an ambush. He had been so sharp lately, so much lighter. But it was getting heavier fast, it felt like he was filling up again with the lead feelings of before, the faces of the people he had let down and paid the ultimate price for. He knew he was sinking and he knew the solution and that was a _one time thing_ he tells himself _one time_ of giving in and nothing more than that but it was strange now the contrast of the bodies – he held one now and it was warm and solid but in such a different way than what he remembers the _one time_ to be. The body he had against him now was heavy not with the solid wall of lust but instead of legs crumbling, unable to support their own weight. No obscenities whispered potent and enchanting against heated skin, just vague murmurs they sound like pleas and please and every manner of soft desperation and they don't light Frank's skin on fire they trickle straight down into his stomach, pulling his heart along for the ride.   
  
(He's not a human shield, just a very real human.)   
  
He's Frank's family, his cousin, someone he spent his childhood with and who accompanied Frank into violent adulthood among the Familgia his name is Ricky and he has a penchant for dry humor his name is Ricky and he doesn't like bell peppers his name is Ricky and he cried in Frank's room when his father died in the line of service to the Family his name is Ricky and he is human and not a shield and somehow the men behind the guns out for blood don't realize this Frank feels Ricky's breath on his cheek sudden and jagged and clear when the bullets tear into his back but don't exit the other side, never reach Frank but ensures that there's someone Frank can never reach for again his name is Ricky he is Frank's cousin and when the black car at the curb screeches to a halt clearly meant for Frank's getaway it's Ricky that goes in first regardless of whose heart is still pumping and vulnerable. Ricky is cold Frank holds him while he gets colder Frank is sorry so sorry.   
  
***  
  
There's nothing at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey that Frank doesn't know intimately, hasn't chased down on cold street corners wandering everywhere but that one place, the place where red lights warning him away flash behind his eyes when he draws near to it in his drunken ambling. He's not safe and he wants it that way. He doesn't deserve safety, not at the cost that it apparently takes to keep him secure, the future head of the Iero Family.   
  
He missed last Sunday (Scotch spilled down his shirt, half the second bottle ruined when he knocks over his nightstand). He needs to be better but he doesn't know how. (Vodka straight at room temperature in the afternoon). His ma deserves better (He falls asleep with bourbon in one hand and cigarette in the other, wakes up on the floor beneath his bed, eye level with a small scorch mark less than an inch from where the puddle of bourbon ends).   
  
He started to drink publicly -- it's a bad move, he knows it, but there is self-destruction again an old friend making a home for themselves beneath his skin. He's got a rum and coke, not his first and not his last for the night. He's sitting at the bar, huddled over his drink like it's his only heat source and hey maybe that's factual after all. The wood of the bar is dark and surprisingly well-polished and Frank, unwillingly, keeps catching his reflection in it. His eyes shift to his drink, trying to avoid himself. Inside the amber puddle – there he is again. At least in that alternate alcohol universe he's drowning like he deserves. He lifts the glass to his mouth and drains it. The burn hasn't subsided from his throat when the barkeep ambles over to him.   
  
“Another, sir?” Frank eyes the bartender over the rim of his emptied glass. He seems like a good man, with strong arms and eyes that are kind if a bit guarded.   
  
“What's your name?” Jerks his head up with the lilt of the question, glass not moved away from lips like it affords any protection at all.   
The bartender finishes wiping the bar and sets the rag aside. Turns to face Frank fully. His posture is wary but his face is fighting him on it, as if unused to being closed off.   
  
“Ray Toro,” His tone is clipped and if he's not physically crossing his arms then his body language is doing it for him.   
Frank pauses and nods slow while considering, eyes sliding closed for the briefest second. “We went to school together?”   
  
Something visibly slackens in Ray as if exhausted from holding himself to carefully together, a jackrabbit peering into the shadows and thinking he's spotted a wolf.   
“Yeah, we did. You were a couple grades behind me, though.” He turns while he speaks, fixing Frank another drink. He sets the drink down, pinkie pressed beneath the glass and slid expertly out at the last moment cushioning its collision with the bar's surface.   
  
Lifting the rim of the glass to his lips, long smooth gulp then: “Hair like that sticks with a man.” Frank   
observes, using a finger from the hand wrapped around his glass to gesture. His hair is wild curls, pulled back at the nape of his neck in a valiant attempt at containment.   
  
Ray nods knowingly, almost a tired gesture were it not for the small smile threatening to pull up the corners of his lips.   
“That's not the first time you've gotten that huh?” Frank comments, not smiling not quite but not actively attempting to scowl which was progress.   
“And it won't be the last, I'm sure,” Ray says, a pleasant sense of finality.   
  
This is the point small talk in which you ask about the years passed since their common point of departure. But Ray knows all that he could safely know through the grapevine – or rather the wine made from said grapes, surely a bartender was privy to local gossip. And Frank... is it even his place to ask about Ray? Is that compromising, to show interest in a man so clearly beneath his stature. He's already breaking rules, being here alone. Working his way up to something less than sober. What was one more, particularly when the behavior was indulgent of his need to feel fucking human every now and again.  
  
“How have you been since school?” Frank asks, his eye trained carefully on Ray's face, catching the fleeting look of shock. There's a pause of silence in which Frank wonders if Ray is calculating, assessing the potential for danger in fraternizing with a Mafioso. It's Frank's turn to be taken aback when Ray answers, realizing his calculations were of an entirely different sort.   
  
“Has it been that long? Five years for you, which would make seven for me?” Ray laughs and it's a full, warm sound like a brush of warm air. Frank imagines it washing over him and it has the potential for infection.   
  
And, yeah, stated like that it seems strangely absurd, given Frank's position in life, that high school could be so close behind him, that he could emerge from that commonality as a killing machine a business man a lord over the city when Ray came out the same side as him and is humble and kind and seems content to small talk over hard liquor.   
  
Frank lets himself relax into a strangely easy conversation. Ray is the kind of person that makes it easy for people to exist around him. Like a yellow light of shelter for waywards. Not unwillingly but unconsciously, Frank almost curls into it. The feeling of someone seeming to want him around in spite of the weight his name bears. They are uninterrupted, speech flowing as close as freely as Frank could really get without forgetting himself entirely. No one approaches the bar; if Ray is like a lighthouse then Frank is a bug zapper, enigmatic light drawing things in only to destroy. People avoid their end of the bar and Frank is not surprised.   
  
They continue on, Ray refreshing Frank's drink less and less frequently as conversation takes precedent over inebriation. But if people around the bar are taking care not to let their presence intrude upon Frank's social life, those further back in the establishment are not quite so courteous. Frank is pulled out of conversation by a kind of scuffling, a half-articulated yell and the slam of chairs being knocked sideways. Ray's mouth quirks into a frown while he looks over Frank's shoulder to the back of the admittedly small room. Frank sees it first, he thinks, his heart jumping without permission into the hollow of his throat. This phenomenon might be why it was suddenly an issue to breathe properly.   
  
A sprawl of violent red across dark floor. The same mistakes he's made before that he wonders if he'll ever stop drawing connection to. It's not blood it's yarn and his eyes trace this up to a face dark hair falling around hazel eyes thick brows a smudge of dark pink lips; it's every detail Frank's never forgotten collected all in one place again. _Him._ He's here and for some reason is on the ground, face balancing both angry and startled. There's a man above him and he's yelling now a swift kick to Gerard's ribs, hindering his quest to get upright again.   
  
Frank is on his feet before he even knows he's made a decision, tossing bills down without another glance at Ray, who seems to be making his way to the other side of the bar. Frank straightens himself up in an automatic kind of way, a practiced casual as if he's not seeing Gerard be punched in the jaw, pulled up by his hair. There are several pairs of hands on him, three on one. Frank fixes his gloves and steps towards the scene, crowd gathered to see the spectacle parting easily around him. Unfortunately for them, the men accosting Gerard don't see Frank until he is right in front of them. Gerard's eyes spot Frank from his position on the ground, eyes burning strangely fierce behind disheveled hair. The men step away from Gerard like they burn beneath his touch. They look from Gerard up to Frank, eyes wide like children caught stealing.   
  
Frank matches their eyes with a dead stare. The entire bar has gone silent around them like a collectively held breath.   
“You're in my way,” Frank says, icy enough for the words to freeze before they hit the ground.   
The men splutter, poorly worded excuses for why they are obstructing his path. Frank raises his hand and shakes his head. Laughs cold. “I didn't ask a question. You have disturbed my evening and now you are in my way.” His raised hand turns into two fingers held up. “That's two strikes against you.”   
  
One of them, either the bravest or the stupidest, tries again at explanation. “Mr. Iero, you don't understand, this guy --” a gesture to Gerard, who is standing now. “He's scum, he's --”   
Frank cuts over his words. “I didn't ask and I don't care. Get out of my way.” He points at Gerard. “You. Leave. I don't care what the rest of you do, but you had better pray that I don't have reason to cross your paths again.”   
  
The men, along with everyone else, scurry to get out of Frank's way, Gerard turning and disappearing without a backwards glance at Frank. The men manage to dissipate amongst the dim-lit tables of people, and Frank nods curtly to Ray who is standing to the side, watching. Ray nods back, gesture heavy with an unspoken gratefulness.   
  
The splatter of red is still on the floor. Frank bends to take the scarf in his hands, leaves with his fingers wrapped around the still-warm yarn.   
  
  



	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again, hope you're all doing well. If you've got the time, let me know how you're liking the story? Con-crit totally welcome! Thank you for reading!

 

The gust of wind that smacks him as he exits is not the reason for his shaking, though it does make for a convenient excuse. It feels like adrenaline making it's rounds, clearing his veins after confrontation. But this is his life, if not a toned-down version; he's used to conflicts, to gunfire and intimidation tactics. To giving orders and making sure they're followed. That is not this. This is inexplicable, his heart racing, locked eyes somehow altering his heart beat. It's like his bones have been shook loose and are rattling around inside his skin suit, jumbled and nervous swarming bees.

 He takes a few steps down the sidewalk. His fingers are shaking around the yarn of the scarf so his future's in shaking hands. He can see his breath hanging in front of him on exhales, a strange suspension of life force made half-tangible. His feet lead the way with his quivering heart backseat driving, steps quickening as he approaches the corner. This is the route he would take, if he were headed back to that apartment. He isn't wrong. Five blocks down, obscured partially by mist settling in around the streetlights. Gerard's moving quickly, a brisk stride in favor of the running that would call attention to him. He's a man with a destination and enemies and he is closer to one than the other.

 Frank isn't tall but he makes the most of his frame, walks quickly and quietly, head down as if he were going in for a kill. Which isn't to say that he's not; it just might not be someone else's this time. He catches up to him quickly, crossing the final few feet with the thought that he could turn back, toss this scarf along the way and go home. Call his mother and tell her he misses her. But there’s still alcohol singing in his bloodstream and his bones are still loose and he can tell himself all he wants that he can walk away from this but he can’t. He’s carrying it around with him like tiny airborne spores, burrowed in his lungs. But before he can bridge the distance between the two of them, Gerard whirls on him, coat flaring, and lunges.

  
Frank can hear a gritted out “let’s do this then, fucker” then he realizes that shit, that is a fucking knife Gerard has got. It happens in a matter of seconds, a flurry of action. Frank is swift if not the most graceful he’s ever been, and he has Gerard on the ground likely before he ever knew what was happening. Frank is using his weight in the most effective way he can think to maneuver, stradling Gerard and pinning his wrists above his head while he lay flat on his back. It’s not ideal, would be better to have gotten him on his stomach and hands pinned behind, but this works in a pinch. Frank was perhaps slower than normal while Gerard was surprisingly quick. Frank’s mind is a little bit behind as well, druding along over the details of mechanics while not quite processing the matter at hand. He blinks down at Gerard, breath coming out in heavy puffs.  
  
  
“Oh, _shit._ Mr.Iero,” Gerard’s eyes are wide and pretty, catching light thrown out by dull streetlamps. He’s not struggling beneath Frank’s grip.   
  
“Frank,” Frank corrects instinctively, mouth moving without approval from his brain.   
  
“Frank,” Gerard echoes. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know it was you. I thought --”  
  
Frank springs backwards off of Gerard’s impossibly warm body.  “You thought you’d take me out, huh? Who the fuck are you working for? Is it the Caligiri’s?” Frank’s spitting venom, spine shifting into a loose fighting stance.   
  
Gerard stands, sets the knife down on the concrete gap between them. “No, Frank. I don’t work for anybody. You know that. I work for me and for Mikey.” He backs away a step or two, hands held aloft and fingers spread, as if in surrender. “I thought you were one of the guys from the bar. I didn’t realize.”  
  
There’s a long pause in which Frank eyes Gerard, appearing to search for guilt on his face. Frank’s the guilty one, actually; he’s not using the extended silence to examine for evidence but rather can’t stop himself looking. His bones seem to shake hard, in time with the thump of his heartbeat. Gerard is here and he’s more beautiful in flesh than in memory. That’s never been true with anyone Frank has laid eyes on before.   
  
“I’m sorry, Frank. It was the last thing I meant to do. Not when I already owe you thanks for what you did back there.” His fingers are still spread and Frank looks at the panels of light that shine through them, backlit by the streetlamp glow. The dirty concrete distance between them is striped by the shadows of his fingers, illumination falling on the scarf Frank dropped in the tussle. Frank stoops to pick it up.   
  
“I wanted to bring this back to you. It’s too cold to be without it,” Frank reaches out to hand it back, Gerard’s finger brushing his to take it.   
  
“Thank you,” Gerard whispers, wrapping it doubly around his neck, not at all like the sleek knot Frank’s used to seeing it in. He pauses, fingers, tangled in it. He looks up at Frank and his eyes are undiluted sparkles. “This was the last thing my grandma made before she passed away.”   
  
Frank is caught off-balance as if the alcohol circulating his body decided to surge upon him all at once. But it’s not the liquor, it’s just Gerard. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Frank says, voice smaller than normal. Gerard’s loss reflects his losses and suddenly the night seems too big for his voice.   
  
Gerard shakes his head with a small, sad smile. “It’s okay,” he says, but then looks up. He gives a half laugh, a bitter choked sound. “Well, no it’s not. But hopefully it will be eventually.” He looks at Frank strangely, almost examining and Frank wonders if Gerard can see the ghosts of people that Frank has let down etched over his face. “Let me buy you coffee. To say thank you. And I’m sorry.”   
  
Frank agrees, and if he knows it’s a bad idea he doesn’t say it aloud.  He picks up Gerard’s knife, handing it back to him as they leave.   
  
***  
  
Frank is crouched in an alley that has likely never seen a suit as expensive as his. It was a good idea, such a good idea in fact that Frank is slightly embarrassed that he wasn’t the one to think of it. But he played along, as if it were his intention all along. Nodding casually as Gerard suggested Frank wait here while Gerard bought coffee from a small cafe at the end of the block. It was a prime location for mafia men to sit and drink beverages that weren’t listed on the menu, conversing amongst one another. This was Iero territory. Frank would be welcomed, sure, but not with the unsavory company he couldn’t believe he was keeping. He’s trying not to think about it, trying to disconnect himself from his desires.  
  
Footsteps approaching from a source unseen still put him on edge put it’s (just?) Gerard. He’s carrying two cups and when he crouches down he hands one to Frank. Franks sips, detects milk and sugar in a way that isn’t overpowering. He looks down the dark of the alley and fishes for something to say. What did you say in a situation you never anticipated being in?   
  
“Lotta ambiance in this alley,” He says in a low voice, wrapping his fingers around the cup’s cardboard warmth.   
  
Gerard smiles in a quiet way. “Yeah, it could be worse. It’s not bad in a pinch though. Draft stays mostly out if the wind’s cooperating.”   
  
Frank might not be fully sober but he’s not dull enough to let that one slip past his understanding. His heart beats a little loudly beneath his layers of clothing, as if reminding Frank it’s there. For once, Frank’s smart mouth falls mute.    
  
“Believe it or not, I didn’t always live the life of luxury that I do today,” Gerard gestures widely while he speaks and Frank is reminded of the bravado of their first meeting, a hint of Gerard’s exuberance and charm rising to the surface. It’s this sort of peacocking facade that Frank was perhaps drawn to in the first place; wasn’t that him after all? A shiny exterior for a crumbling interior? “My line of work isn’t quite a booth at career day. Not something you plan to do.”   
  
Frank looked at him, curiosity and pity and a strange warmth of intimacy burning in his chest. “Yeah?” It’s quiet and encouraging and it feels like he’s back in elementary school, trading petty secrets. But this isn’t petty. This is Gerard.   
  
“Grandma died and we didn’t have any family left to go to,” He says it like it’s a passing line in a book when Frank knows it spans entire chapters, if it’s not a novel in itself. “Tried living on the streets but Mikey... Well, you’ve seen him. He’s just a kid and a scrawny one at that.” Gerard smiles fondly but it fades quickly. “He got double pneumonia and almost died.” When Frank looks up Gerard’s eyes are bright and fierce even in the dim light of the alley. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep him safe.”   
  
Frank blinks, taken aback by the fire beneath Gerard’s words. “I believe you,” Frank says and leaves it at that. He’s busy drawing conclusions in his head, assaulted by the imagery of the two boys in this alley together, curled into one another for warmth like stray cats.   
  
“You’re not drinking?” Frank asks. It’s perhaps a less important question, when there’s so much left as a giant blank in Gerard’s history. Or even in light of events not even an hour past; what exactly was Gerard doing in that bar? Did he know Frank was there?   
  
“It’s for Mikey,” Gerard smiles again at the mention and Frank thinks he sees the dynamic starting to reveal itself; Gerard curls around Mikey’s flame not for warmth so much as to make sure it’s not blown out. He’s his reason. “Hot chocolate,” Gerard points seriously at Frank eyebrows raised. “Little shit _loves_ it.”   
  
This startles a laugh out of Frank’s chest, a sound too bright and loud for the dank drippings of the alley. Gerard looks surprised, bemused, a smile pulling up at one corner of his lips. It’s not even that funny, really, and somewhere underneath the sound bubbling out of his throat Frank knows this. It’s just. He hasn’t laughed in so long. Gerard gets caught in it too, like a dancer suddenly surrounded by the choreography of leaves caught in a whirlwind of leaves. It’s a dangerous sound, laughter, too light not to attract dark, but they seem too beside themselves to remember what the harshness of survival has taught them to never forget.   
  
It’s a moment framed by all the wrong elements: the flickering of a busted streetlamp creeping only partway to where they sat huddled in the center of the alley. There is dirtied cardboard crushed flat, hyper absorbent of the undesirable liquids alleys attracted. Surely rats, surely broken needles, surely so many people outside the confines of the alleyway who would love to take Frank’s head home in a bag and wouldn’t mind Gerard’s as a bonus. But there’s Gerard, and he has this amazing smile. Frank swears he sees fucking stardust in that smile. It’s crooked and perfect and makes Frank’s bones stop shaking when he looks at it. He doesn’t feel wrong or ugly or like the abomination he knows he is. He just feels grateful and momentarily whole, too whole, like there’s a light in his chest near his lungs that has to be shared. Maybe that’s what his laughter is.   
  
Frank’s lost in that motherfucking smile, though. He wants. Blindly and urgently. He leans forward, crossing the space between them, angling his face like he knows exactly what he’s doing when that’s the farthest thing from true. His mouth is so close to that smile, he wants to taste. He’s too quick for his mind to catch up with his heart, but then it does, and he freezes, nearly jumps out of his fucking skin recoiling.   
  
“Oh, shit, fuck,” He’s a mess of panic, scrambling to his feet and knocking over his coffee in the process. He wants to run and not stop until he’s puking up whatever made him think that this was a good idea to begin with.   
  
“Frank, wait,” Gerard says, catching Frank by the sleeve. Frank has cut off his enemies hands for less than that. “Calm down, okay? It’s alright.” Gerard stands and he’s taller than Frank, always has been but Frank feels it especially right now. Gerard looks at him for a second, tilts his head and just looks at him with too-pretty eyes. Then, he’s leaning in and there’s this warm pressure on Frank’s mouth, something sweet and too soft for the world Frank’s lived in his whole life.   
  
When Frank kisses back, he swears he can feel Gerard’s smile on his lips. It tastes even better than it looks.


	13. Chapter 13

“Come home with me,” Gerard whispers into Frank's mouth and Frank's heart shudders to hear it, maybe because of how fucking good it sounds, how it sounds like water warmed to just beneath too hot and slipping deep into that, aches and pain soothed by the temperature.   
  
“I can’t,” Frank says. “I shouldn't.” _I want to._   
  
Gerard sits back on his heels, worries his lip beneath his teeth in a gesture becoming alarmingly familiar to Frank. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
Frank surprises himself, reaching for Gerard’s hand, the one he’s reaching up with to tug at his messy black hair. “I mean. I.” Frank breathes deep through his nose. “Gerard, I’m fucking terrified.” Saying his name sends a strange thrill up his spine. “I’m so fuckin’ scared of what this means and what you do to me and the thoughts I have about you.”   
  
“Why?” And it’s strange to Frank, that someone could live without the time-bomb of worries that Frank carries strapped to his back. It wasn't to say that Gerard’s life was easy, just that he of course wouldn't understand Frank’s unique position as instantaneously as Frank could rifle through his worries, why everything about the proposition of Gerard’s apartment screamed _good_ and _bad_ at competing volumes.   
  
“It’s just that,” He pauses. “Being who I am doesn't allow for this kind of liberty, this… sexual activity. And goddammit Gerard, I the shit I think about when I think about you.”   
  
Gerard laughs and the sound is surprisingly mirthless where moments ago there was warm. “You can buy my body Frank. Keep it under wraps, I’m known for my discretion.” His voice is all broken edges.   
  
Frank is confused, momentarily, by the shift in tone. By the stiffening of Gerard’s hand beneath his. “God, Gerard, no, fuck your body.” It’s dark in the alley but Frank doesn't need sight to know how far up his forehead Gerard’s eyebrows have shot. “I mean, no, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is when I think of you, I think of the way you would die for Mikey, and how you talk out of the side of your mouth but then smile with the whole thing. And how fragile your neck looks under your scarf. And I am terrified ‘cause this is the shit I’m noticing, scared that I’m fantasizing about kissing you and not fucking you. What those things could mean, that scares the shit out of me.”   
  
There’s silence between them, wherein the thickness of their breath collects between them.   
  
“But I mean, your body is nice, too.”  
  
Gerard laughs, a startled sound, and cuffs Frank lightly against the head. Then he falls back again, his fingers working small circles into the skin of Frank’s hand. Neither of them speaks for a long while, and then Gerard repeats. “Come home with me.”  
  
And this time, Frank says: “Yes.”


End file.
